The people who took part in the Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History campaigns are still there. They haven’t gone away. The calculation, however, is that there are no votes in development - which is why, when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank meet in Washington later this week, the talks will not impinge on the election campaign. George Osborne and Ed Balls will be looking to see how they can exploit what the IMF says about the health of the UK economy for domestic political reasons, but that’s about it.

A look at the events in 2014 likely to have the most lasting impact on the region and beyond.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has accepted an invitation to attend the inauguration of Indian Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi, a first in the history of the nuclear-armed rivals, an official said on Saturday."There will be a bilateral meeting on the sidelines between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Mr. Modi," Mohyuddin Wani, the joint secretary of the prime minister's office, told Reuters. "Mr. Sharif will also be calling on the Indian president."

Forget comparisons with 1914, or to Munich in 1938. Forget the war that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s and remember, instead, Schleswig-Holstein. A century and a half ago, it was the Crimea of its day,  a piece of disputed territory that caused international turmoil and confusion.