Philippine Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio visited Singapore on 11-13 February 2015 to embark on the first leg of a series of overseas trips to talk on the South China Sea dispute.

While in Singapore, Justice Carpio paid a courtesy call on Singapore’s Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and visited the National University of Singapore Centre of International Law (CIL) where he met with its head, Prof. Robert Beckman and the members of the CIL’s Oceans Law and Policy Research Programme.

The highlight of Justice Carpio’s trip to Singapore was a lecture he delivered at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University to a mix audience of policymakers, representatives of think-tanks, diplomats, academicians, business people and the faculty and students of RSIS. The lecture was moderated by the former head of RSIS, Singapore’s Non-resident Ambassador to the Holy See and Spain, Ambassador Barry Desker.

Justice Carpio was also interviewed at Bloomberg TV Singapore’s studio by the channel’s anchor in Hong Kong SAR. He utilized the opportunity to elaborate on the merits of the Philippine arbitration case against China in the UNCLOS tribunal, on why China’s 9-dash line claim of the South China Sea has no basis in international law and on the importance of respecting UNCLOS, which provides a dispute settlement mechanism to resolve disputes among its member states.

From Singapore, Justice Carpio and his entourage proceeded to Kuala Lumpur on 13 February 2015 for the next leg of his overseas trip.