A/HRC/30/39 latrines and do not always have the means to afford maintenance and improvements. 30 Some variants of Community-Led Total Sanitation are open to using external subsidies for the most disadvantaged in communities. Some suggest a sequencing approach to the use of public finance. While the initial investments in hardware are expected to be made by the community, public finance should be used in the long term to create the enabling environment for sustainable sanitation and ensuring public health, for instance for maintenance and pit emptying, or through public health interventions that promote sanitation and good hygiene practices.31 Some schemes have provided microfinance for the construction of latrines, which is then paid off over a two- or three-year time frame. This can be an effective way of spreading the cost, but affordability concerns will remain for the poorest households. 46. More generally, Community-Led Total Sanitation encourages community support and assistance from better-off households to people living in greater poverty. Yet many communities are not a coherent whole; there are entrenched power asymmetries and inequalities. People not only experience different levels of poverty and deprivation, but may be marginalized on grounds of ethnicity, caste or other factors. There may be instances where community support is not forthcoming. In other instances, people may feel that they have to rely on the charitable benevolence of others rather than feel entitled to the realization of their right to sanitation. 47. In such instances, as in other contexts of self-supply, the human rights framework stresses that States have an obligation to support people in the realization of their human right to water and sanitation, where needed with financial assistance. States may not absolve themselves of their human rights obligations by relegating responsibilities to communities.32 What must be ensured is that sanitation and water services are affordable to even the most disadvantaged member of a community. B. Ensuring that public financing benefits the most disadvantaged 48. The current reality is that public financing for water and sanitation largely benefits better-off parts of society. Public finance is largely used for large-scale infrastructure in urban areas, which is enjoyed predominantly by middle- and high-income households. 49. The first step to ensuring that public financing is targeted toward the most disadvantaged is to acknowledge the inherent inequalities and biases in the current distribution of public financing. On that basis, States must adopt measures to reach the people who rely on public finance to ensure the affordability of water and sanitation services for all and to reduce inequalities in access. States need to reallocate resources to the most disadvantaged. Reallocating current public resources may mean extending access for all to citywide systems in urban areas or shifting from high-cost interventions that serve 30 31 32 Mary Galvin, “Talking shit: is Community-Led Total Sanitation a radical and revolutionary approach to sanitation?” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, vol. 2, issue 1 (January/February 2015), pp. 920. For instance, see Global Sanitation Fund, Progress Report 2014, p. 4, available from http://www.wsscc.org/sites/default/files/publications/global_sanitation_fund_progress_report_2014_ web.pdf. See the Special Rapporteur’s report on financing (A/66/255), para. 53; see also Galvin, “Talking shit” (footnote 30 above), p. 17. 13