The Southern Cameroons was administered by Great Britain under the United Nations Trusteeship for preparation towards the achievement of self-government or independence. The people of Southern Cameroons voted in a UN supervised plebiscite on February 11, 1961, to achieve independence by joining the independent Republic of Cameroon. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) by Resolution 1608(XV)-5 dated April 21,1961 fixed the date of independence of Southern Cameroons and termination of the trusteeship on October 1, 1961. UNGA invited Great Britain the Administering Authority, the Government of the Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroun to initiate urgent discussions with a view to finalising, before October 1,1961, the arrangements by which the agreed and declared policies of the parties concerned will be implemented. The resolution was not implemented because the agreed and declared policies of the parties concerned were never worked out. This paper argues that the independence of the Southern Cameroons, which was guaranteed by international law to occur on the critical date of October 1, 1961, was achieved nevertheless; but the union with Cameroon on agreed declared policies by the parties did not take place. The failure by the UN to ensure compliance with the resolution frustrated the purported union. This paper addresses the status of Southern Cameroons in international law on the critical date of October 1, 1961, and establishes that Southern Cameroons attained the status of a decolonized independent state, pending formal UN recognition. The paper recognises that, although decolonised and independent, the freedom of Southern Cameroons was hampered by the cession of the territory by Great Britain to Cameroon through United Nations trusteeship colonial diplomacy and mismanagement of the trust, in violation of peremptory norms of international law, erga omnes obligations and the UN Charter. The paper has demonstrated that the UN bears the greatest responsibility for the cession of the Southern Cameroons by Great Britain and its annexation and colonization by Cameroon and the violent armed conflict which has arisen from these violations. The paper has highlighted the uncontrolled organisational failures and mismanagement of the trusteeship over Southern Cameroons which led to the cession of the territory and the harmful effects on the universal rule of law and UN Charter obligations and recommends UN action to redress the violations.
Background : Malaria remains a significant public health concern in many regions of the world, including Mangu L. G. A of Plateau State, Nigeria, where poor waste disposal, blocked drainages, and stagnant water continue to sustain vector breeding. This study examined the relationship between environmental sanitation practices and malaria disease infection in Mangu L. G. A. Materials and Methods : A descriptive cross-sectional survey design was used. Structured questionnaires were administered to 400 residents selected through stratified and random sampling, and were complemented by ten years (2013-2022) of secondary malaria case records obtained from five hospitals in the study area. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequency, charts and tables) and inferential statistics (Spearman's rank correlation and chi-square analysis). Results : Awareness of environmental sanitation was notably high (98.0%), children under the age of five and pregnant women were the most vulnerable to malaria infection (81.0%), and malaria prevalence was most common between May and August (45.0%). Most residents cleaned their surroundings weekly (45.0%), and sanitary inspectors did not conduct routine inspections in 59.0% of cases. A correlation coefficient of 0.926 (p < 0.05) indicated a strong, positive, and statistically significant association between environmental sanitation practices and malaria infection at the 5% significance level. Conclusion : Environmental sanitation practices are strongly associated with malaria infection in Mangu L. G. A. Sanitary inspectors should adopt a fixed schedule for premises inspection, residents should regularly clear their surroundings and drainages to reduce mosquito breeding grounds, and government should enforce environmental sanitation by-laws and expand health education programmes, particularly among vulnerable groups.
Persons with disabilities are among the most vulnerable groups in any humanitarian crisis, including displacement situations. Disability and gender may intersect and compound risks, exposing individuals to various forms of violence, marginalisation, and other detrimental effects. For example, women and girls with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to sexual, physical, and economic violence, whereas men with disabilities are more likely to be harassed or subjected to economic exploitation. At the same time, both groups may encounter social stigma and have difficulties accessing justice. This paper aims to demonstrate how disability and gender intersectionality may affect persons with disabilities in respect of experiencing violence and displacement. A qualitative case study design was used for this purpose. In particular, the present study employed individual semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis in order to explore the situation of forcibly displaced persons with disabilities, including their social inclusion and access to humanitarian aid. Participation was voluntary, and 23 respondents, among whom there were also policymakers and humanitarian practitioners, were recruited for individual interviews and focus group discussions. Document analysis allowed cross-verifying the information and assessing the normative framework further. The analysis followed a thematic approach, and the study was informed by intersectionality theory. The CRPD played an integral role in guiding the research questions, objectives, methodology, and findings. The findings revealed that persons with disabilities in Zimbabwe had experienced multiple forms of exclusion, including insufficient access to humanitarian assistance and justice. At the same time, gender was identified as a critical determinant of the overall situation and response to violence. In addition, the study demonstrated that the so-called adaptive strategies often reflected persons’ attempts to survive in the absence of an adequate response. The conclusion highlights the need to shift the focus from individualised approaches to collective action in order to ensure that displaced persons with disabilities obtain better access to protection and assistance services.
Research article abstracts function as both informational summaries and access points to disciplinary knowledge. This study compares the rhetorical organisation and linguistic realisation of English and Uzbek research article abstracts, focusing on promotional and expository orientations. The corpus contains 68 abstracts published between 2023 and 2025, equally divided between English and Uzbek and drawn from four language-related journals. The corpus was analysed through a five-move, fifteen-step model covering Research Territory, Purpose, Method, Results, and Conclusion/Value. Purpose occurred in all 68 abstracts, but Results was central in English and only conventional in Uzbek (100.0% against 64.7%), and a complete five-move configuration occurred in 70.6% of English abstracts against 29.4% of Uzbek abstracts; both differences were statistically significant. English abstracts more often constructed a concise research niche, identified data and analytical procedures, stated a recoverable study-specific finding, and separated the contribution from the result. These functions were commonly realised through finite active research verbs, explicit grammatical subjects, evidential reporting frames, and contribution verbs. Uzbek abstracts more frequently fore-grounded disciplinary or practical relevance, coordinated operational objectives, inventories of methods, and recommendations, using nominal-predicative purpose constructions, action nominals, passive predicates, and extended sen-tence complexes. Consequently, the English corpus displays a relatively stronger promotional-completion orientation, whereas the Uzbek corpus displays a relatively stronger contextual-expository orientation. These are corpus-level tendencies rather than fixed cultural properties, and they reflect the interaction of linguistic resources, journal expectations, disciplinary practice, and anticipated readership.
Background: Predicting the onset of a new solar cycle is challenging because the sunspot minimum can only be identified retrospectively. A real time, in situ proxy is needed. Purpose: We investigate whether the solar wind helium abundance ( A He ) provides a reliable herald of cycle onset and test the hypothesis that equatorial flux cancellation drives the observed “shutoff” event. Methods: Using ACE/SWICS, Wind/SWE, and OMNI data (1995–2025), we analysed daily A He across the Cycle 23?24 and Cycle 24-25 minima. Equatorial flux cancellation rates R cancel were derived from SOHO/MDI and SDO/HMI magnetograms. Cross?correlation and linear regression quantified the relationship between the A He shutoff and peak cancellation. Findings: A He exhibits a three-phase pattern: a pre-minimum rise, a sharp shutoff (15–30 days, 60–80% drop), and rapid recovery. The shutoff precedes the smoothed sunspot minimum by 22–117 days. Peak R cancel leads the shutoff by 19 days on average (cross correlation 0.84, p <0.005), and the helium drop magnitude scales with R cancel , peak ( r =0.71, p =0.002). Conclusion: Equatorial flux cancellation imprints a distinct, repeatable signature in solar wind helium, providing a robust, real?time herald of solar cycle transition. Recommendation: Continuous A He monitoring at L1 should become a standard operational tool for cycle onset prediction, with an alert issued when shutoff recovery exceeds 50% of the pre?shutoff level. We predict the Cycle 26 shutoff between April–October 2029.
