First of all, about Sudan, I think one can say, looking at Sudan today, that there is hope of an improvement in Darfur. There was an agreement between the Government of Sudan and the JEM, the Islamic movement that has an agenda that goes beyond the Darfur question. There was an agreement between Chad and Sudan after the visit of Déby with al-Bashir. The situation is far from being solved, but apparently the government of Khartoum has a strategy now not to solve the problem but to manage the problem in Darfur.
The reason that is happening, in my humble opinion, is that everybody now is becoming more and more concentrated on the south and on the future of the south, and there, our worries are enormously increasing. First of all, the south is very unstable. The number of casualties in the south has been higher than in Darfur in the last few months because of ethnic conflicts. The role of the government of Khartoum in promoting this kind of conflict is not entirely clear, but it's a question.
The border problem is not solved. The oil question is, of course, related to that. And the levels of governance in the south are appallingly bad. There is a risk of a new country emerging, because my belief is that if the referendum takes place, the votes for independence would be overwhelming. But the new country would be emerging as a failed state, with the north interested in keeping it failed.
We are now very concerned about the future of the south. We are reviewing our operations for the south and are doing a lot of contingency planning for a hypothetical situation, which is that independence might be troubled by conflict between north and south, or, more probably, that independence will be acceptable, but there will be the kind of deterioration of the situation that might create displacement and lots of difficulties for the future.
Now, when I said that we would like to concentrate next year on debate in the international community with our member states on the question of new trends in forced displacement, naturally, climate change and the environment are key factors.
I don't think we can speak about refugees of climate or refugees of climate change. Refugees, according to the 1951 convention, correspond to a well-defined category of people. What is also clear is that the environment and climate change prospects are an enhancing factor of many other causes of displacement, be it food insecurity, be it water scarcity, or be it conflict. I mean, water scarcity generates conflict in many areas where farmers and others compete for limited water resources.
I believe the international community needs to address it and needs to find ways to respond to the protection challenges created by this factor that enhances other factors of displacement in a very worrying way in today's world, especially in some parts of the world. Eastern Africa, for instance, is probably today the most evident. But tomorrow, if the rising level of the oceans becomes a reality, we might have very serious problems in some islands in the Pacific, but also in places like Bangladesh, for instance. A one-metre rise in the level of the ocean would mean 20 million to 30 million people displaced in Bangladesh. This is a very big challenge for the future.