A/HRC/30/39 individual’s right to access a toilet or latrine, but also other people’s human rights, including the right to health (see the Special Rapporteur’s reports on sanitation (A/HRC/12/24), paras. 23-29, and on wastewater (A/68/264). The State therefore has a significant role to play in ensuring that the necessary funding is available for service provision, and for using public financing where services would otherwise be unaffordable. 6. The human rights framework does not, however, rule out tariffs and user contributions for water and sanitation provision. Water and sanitation do not necessarily have to be available free of charge. The human rights framework recognizes that revenues have to be raised in order to ensure universal access to services. If everyone obtained water and sanitation free of charge, that could actually harm low-income households by depriving governments and service providers of the revenue needed to expand and maintain the service, posing a risk to the overall economic sustainability of the system or to the State’s capacity to protect and fulfil other human rights. Moreover, where a policy provides free water distributed through utility networks, this tends only to benefit those who have access to a formal water supply. As the majority of poor and marginalized individuals and groups in developing countries do not enjoy access to a formal water supply, they will not be able to access free water provided by utilities. From a human rights perspective, public funds need to be directed towards extension of services for the most disadvantaged and for ensuring that such services are affordable. 7. Where people face an inability to pay, the human rights framework indeed requires free services that must be financed through sources other than user contributions. To ensure both affordability and financial sustainability, States must look beyond tariffs toward a broader system for financing water and sanitation services, including taxes and transfers, and cross-subsidization through public finance or tariff systems (see the Special Rapporteur’s report on financing (A/66/255)). 8. The human rights to water and sanitation also have important implications as to how payment for services is raised. Human rights call for safeguards in the process of setting tariffs and determining subsidies, both in procedural and substantive terms, which include the human rights principles of transparency, access to information, participation and accountability. They oblige States to ensure that the cost of accessing water and sanitation is affordable and meets the needs of marginalized and vulnerable individuals and groups. The aim of ensuring financial sustainability at the macro level must never lead to situations in which individuals are unable to afford services. Affordability assessments must consider the totality of rights and the expenses people face to realize their human rights. This is all the more important in the context of austerity measures that have resulted in the significant overall burdening of people.1 Particularly during times of economic and financial crises, decisions to introduce or raise tariffs need to be carefully considered. Where price rises happen concurrently with rising unemployment and social spending reductions, they leave many unable to afford essential services. 9. Deciding on the most effective system to ensure affordability will often require focused studies that examine all of the above variables, from assessing the types of services to which individuals have access, to considering how public financing can be used most efficiently. In an attempt to improve affordability of service provision in France, as part of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) Protocol on Water and Health, France is 1 4 See European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies, “The Impact of the Crisis on Fundamental Rights across Member States of the EU - Country Report on Ireland,” 2015, available at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=IPOL_STU(2015)510016, p. 65.