Some 600 experts, politicians and representatives of aid organizations met in Brussels to discuss the Ebola crisis and its consequences. Talks focused on the economic reconstruction of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

“By far, the largest component of our requested budget increase is dedicated to the critical states of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he told the committee in March 2010. (...) In the five years since those remarks, Shah has appeared to focus less and less on Afghanistan and more on other development programs, such as combating global poverty and the Ebola outbreak, while aid to Afghanistan accounts for billions more U.S. taxpayer dollars than any other country where the agency operates.

The 2014 CPD Annual Review demonstrates that although public diplomacy is present in every region of the world, it is predominantly in the northern hemisphere. North America is ranked the most active region in public diplomacy, with the United States contributing the most. Asia (Asia Pacific, Southeast Asia and Central Asia combined) comes in second, and Europe is third, with almost the same presence as Asia. As expected, China, Japan, and South Korea take the lead as the major actors in Asia Pacific. India is also very active in PD in South Asia.

As part of the CPD Annual Review process, in January we highlighted some of the year’s key public diplomacy moments in our Top 10 List of the most notable stories from 2014.

Launched in 2013, the CPD Annual Review was developed to serve as a guide to understanding the global landscape of public diplomacy, its ebbs and flows, its triumphs and its shortcomings.

 With more than one in 10 of the world’s children living in areas affected by armed conflict, the United Nations children’s agency said Thursday that it is struggling to deal with “a new generation of emergencies.” Natural disasters, fast-spreading epidemics and conflicts “are stalking children in ways we have never seen before,” Afshan Khan, Unicef’s director of emergency programs, said in a statement accompanying an appeal for financial support.

Ireland is to donate another €778,000 to Sierra Leone to help fuel a fleet of ambulances and burial vehicles in the Ebola-hit country.  It brings Ireland's total contribution in the affected countries in West Africa to over €18m in 2014.