The duck suits and One Direction's online call "to put pressure on our leaders" are both part of a global effort to send a message to the Financing for Development summit that starts on Monday in Addis Adaba, Ethiopia.

Beyoncé, Pearl Jam, Ed Sheeran, and Coldplay will all be headlining the 2015 Global Citizen Festival on Sept. 26 in New York City’s Central Park. [...] The Global Citizen Festival brings together thousands of people, diplomats, and politicians from around the world to help fight extreme poverty.

The UAE ranked as the world’s largest donor of foreign aid in 2014, proportionately to its national income according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

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.