By Joey Sarte Salceda
Chairman, Institute for Risk and Strategic Studies (Salceda Research)
As I write this article, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. is in New York, USA. campaigning for a Philippine non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, and competing with Kyrgyzstan for the Council’s Asia-Pacific slot. He should succeed and win. A Philippine seat in the Council is not just a diplomatic milestone. It is in our compelling national interest, and it serves the international community’s interest as well.
Our Philippine case relates with the South China Sea issue. In 2013, the Philippines filed an arbitration case under UNCLOS against China, a permanent Security Council member and the world’s second-largest economy. We have no military parity with Beijing and no guarantee of enforcement. We filed anyway. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration comprehensively ruled in our favor. No country has done such initiative to test the rules-based international order against a great power, through UN mechanisms, but we won and prevailed.
The Philippines is a climate security leader in a way that goes beyond hosting arrangements and conferences. Filipino negotiators have helped write the architecture of international climate law itself. Ditas Muller was a central figure in the negotiations that shaped climate change loss and damage frameworks. Our own officials have served as Co-Chair of the UN Green Climate Fund. We did not merely get the mandate to host the Loss and Damage Fund. We helped build the diplomatic groundwork for its existence.
The Philippines today hosts a number of vital international institutions. Aside from the UN Green Climate Fund, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is headquartered in Manila. The International Rice Research Institute, which has contributed significantly more to food security across Asia and Africa than any comparable institution, operates from UP Los Baños, Laguna. We are part of the institutional infrastructure of global development, not a recipient of it.
On human security, over ten million Filipino workers are deployed across every volatile region on earth. When the Iran crisis escalated earlier this year, the Philippines was already activating repatriation protocols before the Council had finished deliberating on the issue. We have done this across Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and now the Gulf corridor. The international community talks about human security as a concept. The Philippines manages it in real time, at scale.
The Council’s dysfunction is structural. P5 rivalry between the United States and China has paralyzed deliberation for over a decade. The Philippines, a treaty ally of the United States, is a developing country with deep ties to China, and a democracy with genuine Global South solidarity. We have an independent national interest that neither great power owns. In the current environment, that independence has real institutional value.
At 115 million people, the Philippines is larger than any Security Council member except China and the United States. Southeast Asia cycles through non-permanent seats too infrequently in the Council, to build a consistent voice. A Philippine seat can help changes that.
Kyrgyzstan is a legitimate state. But the comparison on merits is not close. The Philippines brings with it a landmark UNCLOS ruling, climate law authorship, three major international institutions, and the world’s most extensive operational experience in human security under geopolitical stress.
The vote for the Council’s non-permanent seat will be a test of whether the international community values demonstrated commitment to the UN system or merely diplomatic proximity to great powers. The Philippines should be on the Security Council, and President Marcos will hopefully bring that seat home.