A/HRC/30/39 necessary). This life-cycle cost is particularly relevant for sanitation, considering the management of wastes. Once the costs for service delivery have been estimated, a different discussion is how to recover them. This can include a variety of sources, from tariffs to external public financing and, more important to the aim of this report, how to share the revenues from different users. On this last point, affordability needs to be a key consideration in order to avoid excessively compromising the expenses of people living in poverty. 15. For water, costs range from construction, operation and maintenance, in the case of networked provision, to costs of construction and maintenance of on-site solutions such as wells or boreholes. Connection charges are often a significant barrier for those living in extreme poverty. Household contributions for water services in rural areas and in informal settlements can differ quite substantially from household contributions for piped water provision. Beyond the option of buying water from public or private suppliers, individuals may need to cover the costs of the construction, operation and maintenance of communal or individual household provision (such as a rainwater cistern 4), the cost of purchasing containers to store water, and the treatment of water. Even where water is safe at the source, by the time it has been transported and stored for future use, there is a high risk that it will become contaminated, which leads to extra costs for household water treatment. 16. In relation to sanitation, associated costs for households range from construction of the toilet within the home and tariffs in the case of networked provision, to costs of on-site solutions such as the construction or maintenance of pit latrines and septic tanks. On-site technologies generally require regular cleaning and maintenance, including the emptying of pits or septic tanks, and the proper management and disposal or re-use of wastewater and excreta. Sanitation systems that require water for flushing, such as sewerage systems, will generally imply extra costs for the water needed for flushing toilets. 17. While often overlooked, the use of hygiene facilities and services also has costs. The main expenses, other than installation of a handwashing station, are for water and soap for handwashing and personal hygiene, for water and cleaning products for domestic and food hygiene, and for sanitary napkins or other products for menstrual hygiene management. 18. In addition to material costs of service provision, the time spent on collecting water and accessing sanitation facilities outside the home must also be valued. As women and girls are largely responsible for collecting water, maintaining and cleaning sanitation facilities, and for ensuring the hygienic management of the household, these time costs have an important gender equality dimension. B. Costs of corruption 19. Studies have shown that corruption within the water sector is common. 5 Even where services are nominally affordable to people, corruption may increase the cost of accessing services above official pricing. There may be a lack of transparency in decisions relating to 4 5 6 On rainwater harvesting, see Uende A. F. Gomes, Léo Heller and João L. Pena, “A National Program for Large Scale Rainwater Harvesting: An Individual or Public Responsibility?” Water Resources Management, vol. 26, issue 9 (2012), pp. 2703-2714. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report 2006: Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis (New York, 2006); Transparency International, Dieter Zinnbauer and Rebecca Dobson (eds.), Global corruption report 2008: Corruption in the water sector (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008); J. Davis, “Corruption in public service delivery: experience from South Asia’s water and sanitation sector”, World Development, vol. 32, No.1 (2004), pp. 53–71.