Can We Sign the Treaty Now? Understanding Why the Answer Is No

1. A Treaty Can Only Be Signed Under the Conditions That Created It

Resolution 1608 was tied to a specific historical moment:

Southern Cameroons was a UN Trust Territory under Article 76(b).
La République du Cameroun had just gained independence.
The United Kingdom was still the administering authority.
The Trusteeship Council was active.
The UN General Assembly had ordered a tripartite meeting before 1 October 1961.

These conditions created the legal space where a union treaty could happen.

Today none of those conditions exist.
The Trusteeship system is gone.
The UK no longer has authority over Southern Cameroons.
Southern Cameroons is no longer under UN supervision.
La République du Cameroun functions under a different constitution.
The deadline attached to Resolution 1608 passed long ago.

You cannot recreate the legal environment that made the treaty possible. Once a trust territory leaves the UN list, the mechanism that allowed a treaty is gone forever.

2. A Treaty Cannot Be Signed After the Legal Deadline Passes

Resolution 1608 required that the treaty be negotiated, signed, ratified, and deposited with the UN before the trusteeship ended.

The trusteeship ended on 1 October 1961 with none of this completed. No treaty was drafted, signed, ratified, or filed. Once the trusteeship ended, the legal link between Southern Cameroons and the UN was cut. A trust territory cannot sign the treaty after it stops being a trust territory.

Trying to sign it now is like trying to submit a visa application after the embassy has permanently closed.

3. A Treaty Requires All Three Parties, and One of Them No Longer Exists in Its Role

Resolution 1608 required three signatories:

Southern Cameroons
La République du Cameroun
The United Kingdom

All three had to negotiate and sign.

Today:

The UK is no longer the administering authority.
The Trusteeship Council is no longer functioning.
Southern Cameroons does not have an internationally recognized government to sign on behalf of the territory.
La République du Cameroun has altered the territory unilaterally.

You cannot complete a three-party treaty when one party no longer has any legal standing in that role.

4. Treaties Do Not Work Retroactively

International law is very strict on this point.
You cannot backdate a treaty.
You cannot sign a treaty today and claim that it validates actions taken decades earlier.
You cannot revive a treaty process that never took place.
You cannot pretend a treaty signed today fulfills a mandate from 1961.

A treaty must be signed before the legal act it governs takes effect.
You cannot sign a marriage certificate in 2025 and claim you have been married since 1961.

5. The Legal Consequence of No Treaty Is Simple

Since the required treaty was never signed, the union was never consummated. That means Southern Cameroons remains an uncompleted decolonization case, not a territory legally joined to La République du Cameroun.

This is why:

The UN has repeatedly said no legal act of union exists.
The African Union cannot find any treaty.
Historians have never found a treaty.
Lawyers acknowledge the legal vacuum.
Even officials in Yaoundé admit the union was never formalized.

The absence of a treaty is not something that can be corrected today.
It is the evidence that the union never existed in law.

6. So What Can Be Done Now?

Since you cannot sign the treaty today, the only legal path forward is clear:

Work for the completion of the decolonization process.

That means using:

Article 76(b)
UN records
The absence of a treaty
The principle of self-determination
Comparative cases of uncompleted unions

The solution is not to sign the treaty now.
The solution is to show that the treaty never existed, and therefore the legal union never existed.

Final Message to the Public

Here is the one-line answer you can use anywhere:

We cannot sign the treaty today because the legal window closed in 1961. The only option left is the one international law already supports, which is to complete the decolonization process that was never finished.