A/HRC/30/39 85. For households that receive water and sanitation through utilities, data is available through the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities, which includes data on water tariffs charged by a significant number of utilities. 48 Beyond such existing initiatives, a review of potential indicators demonstrates the complexity of monitoring affordability. 49 Determining and monitoring the costs of non-networked supply and including them into measures of affordability is particularly challenging, but essential from the perspective of human rights. Focusing solely on utility tariffs bears the risk of severely underestimating expenses and would paint an overly positive picture of affordability that only captures the better-off, while neglecting the very real challenges that the most disadvantaged people and communities face in accessing water and sanitation. This review shows that monitoring affordability in its complexity (including water, sanitation and hygiene access expenditure) is feasible, but would require a combination and analysis of data from different sources. 50 The Special Rapporteur encourages States and international organizations to explore these options further to ensure more comprehensive monitoring of the affordability of access to services. VI. Conclusion and recommendations 86. Affordability is key for the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation. Ensuring affordable service provision for all people requires a paradigm shift – starting from the perspective of human rights. Economic sustainability and affordability for all people are not impossible to reconcile, but human rights require rethinking current lines of argumentation and redesigning current instruments. The main challenge is to ensure that targeted measures and instruments do, in fact, reach the people who rely on them most. For instance, tariffs must be designed in such a way that the most disadvantaged of those connected to formal utilities receive the assistance they need. It also requires ensuring that public finance and subsidies reach the most marginalized and disadvantaged individuals and communities, who are often not (yet) connected to a formal network, who may live in informal settlements without any formal title or in remote rural areas where self-supply is common, and who are often overlooked or deliberately ignored in current policymaking and planning. 87. The Special Rapporteur offers the following recommendations. States should take the following measures: (a) Assess what financing mechanisms and subsidies are in place, including hidden subsidies, and who benefits from them; (b) Ensure transparency about existing and planned financing mechanisms and subsidies; (c) Consider establishing national legislation requiring that service providers and subnational governments include affordability concerns in policies and in service provision; (d) Set affordability standards at the national and/or local level, based on a participatory process, involving in particular people living in poverty and other 48 49 50 International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities, Tariffs Map, available from http://www.ib-net.org/en/tariffs_map.php. Guy Hutton, “Monitoring ‘Affordability’of water and sanitation services after 2015: Review of global indicator options”, 20 March 2012, available from http://www.wssinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/resources/END-WASH-Affordability-Review.pdf. Ibid. 21