Understanding the West Philippine Sea: What You Need to Know
August 07, 2026 – Quezon City, NCR, Philippines
Article by Whesley Samar
Part 1: The Dual Anchors — Coast Guard, Navy, and the Nation's Waters
International Law and Maritime Governance | West Philippine Sea
A country with a coast, or a coast with a country? The Philippines answers this question through geography before it answers it through policy: 7,641 islands, connected by sea rather than separated by it. For most of the country's institutional history, that sea functioned as a perimeter, a line to patrol, not a territory to govern in its own right.
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea redefined that relationship (United Nations, 1982). Under the Convention, a coastal state holds sovereign rights over an Exclusive Economic Zone extending 200 nautical miles from its baselines, encompassing fishing grounds, energy reserves, and shipping lanes (United Nations, 1982). For an archipelagic state, this is not an incremental legal update; it restructures the map itself. The water between islands ceases to function as empty space and becomes, in law and in practice, an extension of national territory. Department of National Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro has described the resulting posture as covering "the entire 360-degree maritime expanse surrounding the Philippines' archipelagic baselines" (Philippine Information Agency, 2025), a formulation that treats the EEZ not as a buffer zone but as sovereign space requiring active defense.
The Philippines answers this contested geography with two maritime services, not one. This division is not bureaucratic redundancy; it is doctrine. The Philippine Coast Guard was established as an armed and uniformed service attached to the Department of Transportation under the Philippine Coast Guard Law of 2009 (Republic Act No. 9993, 2009). Its statutory mandate spans five functions: maritime safety, marine environmental protection, maritime search and rescue, maritime security, and maritime law enforcement, and it is empowered to enforce regulations that promote the safety of life and property at sea (Republic Act No. 9993, 2009).This is the "white hull" fleet. Its posture is civilian, its claim legal rather than martial, the kind of claim carried in a hail such as this is Philippine Coast Guard, you are conducting illegal activities within Philippine waters, we advise you to leave the area.
The Philippine Navy operates under a different mandate. As the maritime arm of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, it is tasked with safeguarding national sovereignty, protecting territorial integrity, and securing maritime resources (House of Representatives, 2025a). Since 2024, this mandate has operated under the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept, a Department of National Defense strategy intended to give the Armed Forces "the modest capability to be able to secure and to protect our maritime domain, not only up to the EEZ but even the extended continental shelf" (Nepomuceno, 2024,). This is the "gray hull" fleet. Its posture is deterrence, its claim territorial defense by force if necessary, the kind of claim carried in a hail such as this is the Philippine Navy, you are in Philippine territorial waters, withdraw immediately.
Notably, the statutory separation between the two services is not absolute. Republic Act No. 9993 provides that in times of war, as declared by Congress, the Coast Guard or parts thereof shall be attached to the Department of National Defense (Republic Act No. 9993, 2009), a structural acknowledgment that the two services, though institutionally distinct in peacetime, are designed to interoperate under strain. Neither fleet is dispensable in isolation: a white hull without a gray hull's deterrent weight behind it, and a gray hull without a white hull's de-escalatory posture in front of it, each represent an incomplete strategy.
This division of labor operates against a backdrop of formal legal standing. The Philippines' position in the West Philippine Sea rests principally on the Arbitral Award issued on July 12, 2016, by a five-member tribunal constituted under Annex VII of UNCLOS, in the case brought by the Philippines against China (Permanent Court of Arbitration, 2016). The tribunal ruled overwhelmingly in favor of the Philippines, declaring China's nine-dashed line and its claimed historic rights over the South China Sea to have no legal basis under UNCLOS (Liu, 2025). The tribunal further found that Scarborough Shoal constitutes a traditional fishing ground for multiple nationalities, including Filipino, Chinese, and Vietnamese fishers (Foreign Service Institute, n.d.), a finding that undercuts exclusive claims to the shoal without resolving the broader question of sovereignty over it. The Award is final and binding on both parties under Article 296 of UNCLOS (Cannon et al., 2016), though its authority is not self-enforcing; compliance depends on state behavior rather than judicial enforcement mechanisms, a limitation this series returns to in later parts.
What the Award establishes, unambiguously, is legal standing. Standing alone does not identify a single ship, distinguish a frigate from a patrol vessel, or explain what a nine-dash line looks like from the deck of a Philippine Coast Guard cutter. Part 2 supplies that vocabulary: a field guide to the ship classes, weapons systems, and technical terminology, from SSMs and SAMs to CIWS and RoRe missions, that recur throughout the rest of this series, so that later parts can be read without constant translation.
References
Cannon, A., Roughton, D., & Ormsby, H. (2016, July 22). Final award published in the South China Sea arbitration. Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer. https://www.hsfkramer.com/notes/publicinternationallaw/2016-07/final-award-published-in-the-south-china-sea-arbitration
Foreign Service Institute, Department of Foreign Affairs, Republic of the Philippines. (n.d.). Key findings of the South China Sea arbitration. https://sites.google.com/mail.fsi.gov.ph/breakingwaves/scs-arbitration/key-findings
House of Representatives, Republic of the Philippines. (2025a). Archipelagic Defense of the Philippines Act (House Bill No. 4750). https://docs.congress.hrep.online/legisdocs/basic_20/HB04750.pdf
House of Representatives, Republic of the Philippines. (2025b). [Explanatory note accompanying amendments to the Philippine Coast Guard Law] (House Bill No. 5127). https://docs.congress.hrep.online/legisdocs/basic_20/HB05127.pdf
Liu, M. (2025, July 22). The 2016 South China Sea arbitration and the limits of international law. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2025/07/the-2016-south-china-sea-arbitration-and-the-limits-of-international-law/
Nepomuceno, P. (2024, August 21). PH Navy eyes use of 'capital ships' to defend EEZ. Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1273449
Permanent Court of Arbitration. (2016, July 12). The South China Sea arbitration (Philippines v. China): Award (PCA Case No. 2013-19). https://pcacases.com/web/sendAttach/1801
Philippine Information Agency. (2025, March 13). PBBM's West Philippine Sea stand: 'Filipinos do not yield.' https://pia.gov.ph/news/pbbms-west-philippine-sea-stand-filipinos-do-not-yield/
Republic Act No. 9993, Philippine Coast Guard Law of 2009. (2009). Congress of the Philippines. https://lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2010/ra_9993_2010.html
United Nations. (1982). United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf
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