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Former Red Cross chief to head Swisspeace

Jakob Kellenberger, former Swiss diplomat and ex-president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, is taking over as head of Swisspeace, the Bern-based research institute.

Published: 21 May 2013 21:31 CEST

Former Red Cross chief to head Swisspeace

Jakob Kellenberger. Photo: ICRC

Kellenberger was named on Tuesday to take over as Swisspeace president in September from Hans-Balz Peter, who has overseen the group since 2006.

The NGO describes itself as a “practice-oriented peace research institute” that analyzes the causes of violent conflicts and develops “strategies for their peaceful transformation”.

Kellenberger will help make the work of Swisspeace even better “with his experience in the diplomatic sphere and his contacts on the international level,” the organization said in a news release.

The Appenzell native was secretary of state for foreign affairs from 1992 to 1992 before presiding over the ICRC from 2000 to 2012.

Since his departure from the Red Cross in June 2012 he has been teaching at the University of Salamanca in Spain and at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).

Kellenberger is also a visiting professor at Geneva's Graduate Institute.

Founded as the Swiss Peace Foundation in 1988, Swisspeace is devoted to improving independent peace research in Switzerland by doing such things as analyzing violent conflicts and their peaceful transformation.

With a staff of around 50, it is associated with the University of Basel and is a member of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences.

An independent research institute, it advises the Swiss government and non-governmental players on questions relative to the civil promotion of peace.

It receives funding principally from the federal department of foreign affairs, the Swiss national fund and the United Nations.

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Spain's basic income scheme hits backlog dead-end

Red Cross volunteers bring food packages to elderly and low income people. Photo: Cesar Manso/AFP

The measure was a pledge made by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's leftwing coalition government, which took office in January, bringing together his Socialist party with far-left Podemos as the junior partner.

The scheme — approved in late May — aims to guarantee an income of 462 euros ($546) per month for an adult living alone, while for families, there would be an additional 139 euros per person, whether adult or child, up to a monthly maximum of 1,015 euros per home. It is expected to cost state coffers three billion euros ($3.5 billion) a year.

The government decided to bring forward the launch of the programme because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has hit Spain hard and devastated its economy, causing queues at food banks to swell.

Of the 750,000 applications which were filed since June 15 when the government started accepting requests, 143,000 — or 19 percent — have been analysed and 80,000 were approved, according to a social security statement issued on August 20.

'Months of waiting'

But Spain main civil servant's union, CSIF, paints a darker picture. “Nearly 99 percent of requests have not been processed,” a union spokesman, Jose Manuel Molina, told AFP.

The social security ministry has only really analysed 6,000 applications while 74,000 households that already receive financial aid were awarded the basic income automatically, he added.

For hundreds of thousands of other households, the wait is stressful. Marta Sanchez, a 42-year-old mother of two from the southern city of Seville, said she applied for the scheme on June 26 but has heard nothing since.

“That is two months of waiting already, when in theory this was a measure that was taken so no one ends up in the streets,” she added.

Sanchez lost her call centre job during Spain's virus lockdown while her husband lost his job as a driver. The couple has had to turn to the Red Cross for the first time for food.

“Thank God my mother and sister pay our water and electricity bills,” she said, adding their landlord, a relative, has turned a blind eye to the unpaid rent.

'Rushed everything'

A spokeswoman for the ministry acknowledged that the rhythm “was perhaps a bit slower than expected” but she said the government was working to “automate many procedures” so processing times should become faster from now on.

“The launch of a benefit is always difficult … and this situation is not an exception,” she added.

But Molina said this was a new situation, that was made worse by years of budget cuts to the public service which has lost 25 percent of its staff over the past decade.

“The problem is that they rushed everything, did it without training and a huge lack of staff,” he added.

The social security branch charged with the basic income scheme has only 1,500 civil servants, who also process most pension applications, Molina said.

These officials are facing an “avalanche” of requests, which already match the number of pension requests received in an entire year, he added.

About 500 temporary workers have been recruited as reinforcements but their assistance is limited because they do not have the status of civil servant, so they cannot officially approve requests for financial aid.

Demand is expected to increase. The government has said the measure was expected to benefit some 850,000 homes, affecting a total of 2.3 million people — 30 percent of whom were minors.

When the scheme was launched the government said all it would take is a simple online form, but this is a problem for many low-income families without computers and internet access, especially since the waiting time for an in-person meeting to apply is about two months, according to the CSIF union

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