Default of appearance before an International Arbitration Tribunal with emphasizing on c China and the Philippines Case

Subject Areas : International Relations

seyed fakhrodin mokhtari ¹ (International Law Group. South Tehran Branch. Islamic Azad university. Tehran. Iran.)
mohammad ali solhchi ² (Associate Professor of Allameh Tabatabai University. Tehran.Iran.)
mansour pournouri ³ (International Law Group. Central Tehran Branch. Islamic Azad university. Tehran)

Received: 2022-02-06 Accepted : 2023-07-03 Published : 2023-05-22

Keywords: jurisdiction, International Dispute, Default of appearance, Arbitration Tribunal, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982),

Abstract :

Observance of the adversarial principle is associated with that the trial is not conducted in the absence of one parties. On the other hand, observing the interests of the party that has referred to the competent tribunal requires continued consideration and issuance final decision. If a country can deprive the jurisdiction from the competent tribunal by not appearing, this will severely undermine the credibility of peaceful dispute resolution. China issued a plan to the UN Secretary-General in 2009 and announced the drawing of a Nine-Dash Line in the South China Sea. The Philippines as the most protesting country, alleges an international dispute over the incompatibility of China's Nine-Dash Line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) and on January 22, 2013, citing the provisions of the Convention, it referred its case against China to an arbitration tribunal under Section 7, Chapter 15 of the Convention. China declined to participate in all proceedings because it considered the arbitration tribunal incompetent to hear the dispute. This article intends to examine the validity of the dispute resolution process in the event of default to appear before the competent tribunal. The concise conclusion of this article is that the country absent from the proceedings is still considered as a party to the dispute and mere absence will not cause the deterioration of this position or the loss of competence of the competent tribunal but special tasks are established for the competent tribunal, which are examined in this article.