September 2026, Colombia – Dr. Jay Batongbacal, UP law professor and one of the country’s leading experts in international maritime law, delivered a series of lectures in Colombia in line with the Philippine Embassy’s commemoration of the Maritime and Archipelagic Nation Awareness Month or MANAMO 2026.

 

Prof. Batongbacal held lectures on challenges and trends faced by the law of the sea in a time of a polycrisis at the Augusto Ramírez Ocampo Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, as well as Colombian higher education institutions such as ICESI University in Santiago de Cali and Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. At each stop, Prof. Batongbacal unpacked the same urgent question from a different angle: how maritime law can hold its footing in an international legal order that feels, increasingly, unmoored.

 

Opening the lecture at the Diplomatic Academy, Philippine Ambassador Adrian Bernie Candolada framed the stakes in more direct terms for archipelagic nations like the Philippines: “for archipelagic states like ours, the ocean is not a mere boundary: it is a bridge, a livelihood, an inheritance, and, increasingly, a responsibility,” a responsibility made heavier, he noted, “in an era when the rules-based international order is tested more often than it is honored.”