Field Support developed and disseminated a policy directive that defines and conceptualizes the diverse work of civil affairs. This has provided the foundation for the development of this Handbook, as well as training and recruitment profiles to ensure that civil affairs components are strong, well-trained and well planned, ready to address the challenges ahead. This institutional framework will need to continue to evolve and develop in response to analysis of the ongoing shifts in the global security environment. The World Bank's World Development Report 2011, for example, found that many countries are caught in a mutually reinforcing cycle of violence and poverty. It also found that more and more people are suffering from violence that is linked to lack of governance and rule of law, rather than to outright war. These changes in the global security environment have resulted in mandates increasingly requiring higher levels of civilian engagement on a wide variety of thematic and cross-cutting issues, ranging from governance, rule of law and institution-building through to early peacebuilding and protection of civilians from threats of violence. For peacekeeping, of particular note among these emerging issues is the protection of civilians, which has increasingly become a major part of the international discourse around intervention. This was demonstrated in the international dialogue on both Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and Côte d'Ivoire in early 2011 and earlier in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Darfur. Protection of civilians has also increasingly become a specific mandated task, after inclusion in eight UN peacekeeping mandates by the Security Council. It can be expected that civil affairs will be at the forefront of an integrated and coordinated approach to mandate delivery on this issue, in terms of civilian and government engagement on the ground. Meanwhile, as many peacekeeping operations mandated as part of a surge during the 2000s are starting to draw down their military presence, the UN continues to evolve, transitioning towards an increased focus on the civilian dimension of ”peacebuilding” and its role in avoidance of a return to conflict. Here, civil affairs has a key role to play – within both peacekeeping and political missions – by ensuring that efforts to mitigate conflict drivers and to engage and support local government and communities have meaning on the ground outside the capitals in which the UN is deployed. A continued focus on local presence in these contexts is key if the UN