FINDING ANSWERS
It’s definitely an idea whose time has come.
The need for Filipino students to be taught about the significance of our exclusive economic zone (EEZ), officially known as the West Philippine Sea (WPS), and the 2016 Arbitral Award that invalidated China’s 9-dash line claim over the South China Sea is now of paramount importance.
Many of us who’ve grown weary and wary of China’s incessant behavior in our EEZ have come to realize that protecting our patrimony would be a long and arduous struggle that would require unrelenting patriotic fervor among generations of Filipinos.
The long-haul struggle to safeguard our country’s interests seems bound to go beyond the lifetime of all Filipinos alive today. With Chinese leader Xi Jinping deemed to be "president for life" and with the undiminished power of the Chinese Communist Party, it's expected that China's expansionism and transgressions in our WPS would continue for decades to come.
Thus, the need to develop patriotic fervor in our young who, in turn, will have to inculcate, nurture, and enhance the same patriotic spirit in future generations of Filipinos to carry on with the fight, is certainly of paramount importance.
It’s in that context that I therefore welcome the recent proposal of the Department of Education to include lessons on WPS and Arbitral Award in the curriculum of Grade 10 students. A draft curriculum guide for Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies) showed WPS will be taught under “Territorial issues and border conflicts,” while the arbitral ruling will be under “Responses to economic challenges.”
I’ve long been advocating for WPS and the Award to be taught in our schools. I’ve written about it in previous columns. In 2021 when I helped form the Alliance for Life and the Law of the Sea, we called on the DepEd and the Commission on Higher Education to include in the school curriculum not only the WPS and the Award, but also the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).
Such topics ought to be part of the mandatory study of the Philippine Constitution in high school and college, to ensure that Filipinos are more aware of Philippine territory and national patrimony.
The Alliance for Life and the Law of the Sea has proposed a unified, multi-pronged, and whole-of-country strategy to fight off transgressions in the WPS.
Such strategy calls for our civil society organizations (CSOs) to educate members on the significance of the EEZ, UNCLOS, and the Award through webinars, symposia, and town hall meetings organized at regional, provincial, city, town, and barangay levels, in cooperation with local government units. CSOs’ alliances with international counterparts to enlist support for our cause must also be formed.
The Alliance also had economic proposals. With legislation from Congress, appropriate departments of government must assert our sovereign rights over the EEZ by inviting joint-venture partners to exploit and develop oil, gas and other resources in the WPS, as well as the Philippine Rise (Benham Rise).
On political and diplomatic aspects, the Alliance called on the Department of Foreign Affairs to continue filing appropriate diplomatic protests every time our sovereign rights are violated, and to initiate actions to rally the world’s governments to respect UNCLOS and enforce the Award.
The DFA, in consultation with Congress and experts, must also conduct an in-depth study on the propriety of filing a resolution before the UN General Assembly and other international bodies to call for compliance with the Award.
The Alliance also called on the Department of National Defense to join Freedom of Navigation Exercises by world powers and organize the same among ASEAN countries with overlapping claims in the South China Sea.
It is imperative to exhaust all possible means to conserve and develop our patrimony, without resorting to war. We must never lose sight of the fact that future generations of Filipinos deserve and are entitled to the benefits of our patrimony – WPS is rich in fish, oil, gas and other mineral and aquatic resources worth several trillions of dollars when explored and developed.
With the significance of the WPS and the Award being taught in schools, there is great hope that Filipinos, now and in the future, would never give up in the relentless fight to protect our patrimony.
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