The ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on Maritime Cooperation, adopted at the 48th Summit in Cebu on May 8, 2026, referred to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) no less than 18 times, reaffirming the key principles of peace and stability, peaceful resolution of disputes and respect for UNCLOS.
However, ASEAN never officially recognized the 2016 Arbitral decision on the South China Sea issued by an arbitral tribunal constituted under Annex VII of UNCLOS – the very convention that ASEAN itself has repeatedly affirmed as the overarching legal framework governing all activities at sea.
July 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of the arbitral ruling in favor of the Philippines in its case against China regarding the South China Sea. How will ASEAN respond to this important legal step?
ASEAN’s historic response to the 2016 price
Immediately after the awarding of the South China Sea Prize in 2016, ASEAN failed to forge a unified position. At the 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM), held in Vientiane, just two weeks after the ruling, member states could not reach consensus to include any direct reference to the decision in the joint press release. According to Philippine officials, each proposed reference was vetoed by a Member State without explanation or counter-proposal. The same model reappeared during the 30th ASEAN Summit in Manila in 2017 and in subsequent years. Nearly a decade later, ASEAN is still struggling to reach consensus on the 2016 price.
Any attempt to predict ASEAN’s response requires examining how its member states have responded to this price over the past decade. ASEAN Considering consensus based In principle, the collective reflects the national interests and political preferences of each member.
The sharp differences among ASEAN member states can be classified into three groups. The first is made up of countries which have openly aligned themselves with the Chinese position, namely Cambodia and Laos, and to a lesser extent Thailand. Cambodia openly opposed the decision and sworn to oppose any ASEAN statement endorsing it. As ASEAN Chair in 2016, Laos maintained formal neutrality in order to assume its responsibilities, but remained supportive of Beijing’s rejection. Thailand issued a statement dated July 12, 2016, which meticulously avoided the words “decision”, “sentence” or “court”. Many observers band Thailand, alongside Laos and Cambodia, arguing that it was showing a trend tilt to Beijing in pursuit of defense procurement agreements and infrastructure investments.
The second group supported or invoked the sentence to varying degrees, notably in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and later the Philippines. Vietnam officially adopted the most positive position within ASEAN “welcoming” the award, and has regularly relied on the tribunal’s legal findings to defend its own maritime rights and sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.
Indonesia initially responded with calling for restraint and respect for international law. However, in May 2020, Jakarta submitted a note verbale to the United Nations Secretary-General stating that in fact accepted the conclusion of the award showing that the “nine-dash line” has no legal basis.
Malaysia, continuing its policy of “quiet diplomacy” avoided a direct confrontation with Beijing while would have relying on elements of the legal reasoning of the award in its 2019 submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) regarding a continental shelf extension claim.
The Philippines has followed a more mercurial path. Under President Rodrigo Duterte, who took office just weeks before the ruling was handed down, Manila adopted a particularly restrained response And actively downplayed this price while pursuing closer economic ties with China. This approach changed significantly under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who pupil the 2016 award into a central pillar of the Philippines’ South China Sea strategy.
The third is the neutral or silent group, made up of Brunei, Singapore and Timor-Leste. Brunei continued to play the role of “silent” requester in the South China Sea, avoiding direct confrontation and refrain from issue any official statement on the price. Singapore said it had “took note” of the price and was studying its implications. Nevertheless, during a visit to Washington in 2016, then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, would have stressed the importance of respecting the result of the arbitration, attracting critical from Beijing. Similarly, Timor-Leste, which was not yet a member of ASEAN at the time, also avoided taking a direct position on the price, but insisted UNCLOS as “Constitution of the Oceans”.
ASEAN’s consensus mechanism has allowed opponents of the price to block favorable speech while supporters avoid public confrontation. Even if there is active support from Vietnam or the Philippines, it is not enough to overcome the opposition and silence of other members. This structural reality explains why, despite numerous ASEAN foreign ministers’ meetings and summits over the past decade, the organization has never issued a collective statement formally recognizing or directly invoking the 2016 award.
Will ASEAN change its response?
The 10th anniversary of the arbitral award coincides with the Philippine Chairmanship of ASEAN in 2026 and the ASEAN Chairmanship. continuous efforts conclude an “effective and substantive” Code of Conduct (COC) for the South China Sea. Will this lead to a change in the bloc’s approach to awarding the prize?
The most likely scenario is that ASEAN continues to face a collective dilemma in reaching consensus on any declaration relating to the 2016 price. After all, this trend has remained unchanged over the past decade.
The second possibility is that the Philippines, as chair of ASEAN, can promote stronger language in the President’s Statement or the 59th WMA Joint Communiqué, program by July 21, 2026. While a direct reference to the 2016 price remains politically difficult, ASEAN could adopt stronger wording, emphasizing the need to “fully respect legal processes undertaken in accordance with UNCLOS.” This would set a linguistic precedent for future ASEAN declarations. In the short term, this would not immediately change China’s behavior; however, this could increase the long-term reputational cost of failing to comply with international law.
The least likely scenario would be a collective ASEAN statement formally recognizing or endorsing the 2016 award. ASEAN’s consensus decision-making process makes such an outcome highly unlikely. At present, there is no indication that the strategic calculations of Member States are moving in this direction. This situation is unlikely to change unless pro-China alignments within ASEAN weaken, member states reduce their economic dependence on China, or Beijing takes steps that are widely seen as crossing a political and diplomatic “red line” that forces a unified ASEAN response. Yet what exactly constitutes such a threshold remains unclear, making the prospect of collective price approval remote in the foreseeable future.
What ASEAN’s continued silence means
The 10th anniversary of the 2016 arbitration award comes at a particularly precarious time. China’s coercive activities in the South China Sea have not diminished, but have steadily increased. ASEAN’s silence sends a worrying message that a major power can simply ignore a binding decision issued by an international tribunal established under accepted legal procedures, without paying significant political or diplomatic costs. This impression may contribute to the perception that international law is only effective when the interests of powerful states are not at stake, which would erode not only the authority of the award itself, but also the broader credibility of the rules-based international order.
Meanwhile, the 2026 deadline The conclusion of the COC, jointly approved by ASEAN and China in 2023, is approaching, and doubts about its completion continue to grow. Wu Shicun, president of the Huayang Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, argued that the COC is unlikely to be finalized under the Philippine presidency. A major obstacle lies in the continuing disagreement over the relevance of the 2016 prize. Manila it is expected that emphasize its legal principles and conclusions associated with the decision, while Beijing opposes any attempt to link the COC to the process or its conclusions. As ASEAN continues to avoid mentioning price to preserve internal consensus or appease Beijing, the COC process may remain incomplete.
The significance of the 10th anniversary of the 2016 South China Sea arbitral award lies not in its ability to transform the dispute itself, but in its ability to force all relevant actors to reevaluate their positions in a regional environment that has changed dramatically since 2016. Even if the award has not changed China’s behavior on the ground, it has profoundly remodeled the language, argumentation and legal framework of the South China Sea debate.
Ultimately, ASEAN’s response to this anniversary will reflect a legitimacy struggle between two opposing viewpoints: one that “might makes right” and the other according to which international law, despite the absence of robust enforcement mechanisms, remains one of the rare instruments available to small and medium-sized states in their interactions with great powers. Whether ASEAN should officially weigh in on the 2016 award remains a matter of debate. However, whatever approach is chosen, ASEAN must find the most effective way to define its own role and credibility as a champion of a rules-based regional order in the years to come.