1. The Southern Cameroons was part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Cameroons under United Kingdom’s Administration. The Trusteeship Agreement between the United Nations and the United Kindgom was signed on 13 December 1946.
2. The name, Southern Cameroons, comes from the fact that the British Administering Authority had divided the Trust Territory into a Southern and Northern part, even while the territory was still a League of Nations mandated territory. British Southern Cameroons was created by the British Order in Council of June 26, 1923. By this act of the colonial authority, the British Southern Cameroons became a distinct territory from British Northern Cameroons within the international system, and a unit of self-determination.
3. The Southern Cameroons therefore does not refer to the Southern part of the Republic of Cameroon, but the Southern part of the British Cameroons.
4. French Cameroon was a United Nations Trust Territory under France.
5. French Cameroons and British Cameroons were separate UN Trust Territories with separate agreements, and each governed separately by Article 76(b) of the United Nations Charter. Apart from the fact that they were former parts of an ephemeral German Kamerun that lasted just 30 years and which was formally dismembered by the Versailles Treaty of 1919, there was no other link between them, either in language, administration, culture, politically or otherwise. Each was being prepared for its own self-determination as per Article 76(b) of the UN Charter.
6. British Cameroons was ruled from Nigeria until 1954, when members of the Southern Cameroons in the Nigerian Eastern House of Assembly walked out and returned to Buea, capital of Southern Cameroons, where they formed a thriving parliamentary democracy which lasted until 1961. From 1954 then, the Southern Cameroons was self-governing, with its government, Prime Minister, parliament, judiciary and House of Chiefs. It conducted its first free and fair election in which power changed hands peacefully in 1959.
7. On 1 January 1960, in application of Article 76(b) of the UN Charter, French Cameroons gained independence from France and became known as La République du Cameroun, or in English, the Republic of Cameroon.
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