A/HRC/45/10 B. Minimum core as a house: an enabling environment 1. Policies, laws and regulations 44. The minimum core obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights include initial and immediate steps that States need to take in order to adopt and implement a national water and sanitation strategy and plan of action addressing the whole population, with a specific focus on those in vulnerable situations. 39 They also include efforts to make the human rights to water and sanitation justiciable by explicitly recognizing the human rights to water and sanitation in the domestic legal system. These are of immediate effect and constitute part of the State’s minimum core obligations. 45. In the water and sanitation sector, creating an enabling environment involves building and maintaining institutions, regulations and processes that ensure a sustainable provision of services.40 In a human rights context, this enabling environment requires States to ensure that actors are bound to realize human rights, with the creation of mechanisms to hold them accountable. Central to this is the introduction of domestic legal and regulatory frameworks that recognize the human rights to water and sanitation, which generates a legal foundation for clarifying the roles and human rights obligation and responsibility of accountable actors, their obligation to provide clarification and information and to establish enforcement mechanisms to hold actors accountable.41 2. Non-discrimination and equality 46. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has stated that States’ minimum core obligations encompass the obligation to ensure equitable distribution of all available facilities and services. 42 In other words, water and sanitation services must be provided on a non-discriminatory basis and it is not adequate to proceed as if all are departing from an equal baseline in terms of their likelihood to get access to services. Rather, those who are unserved or underserved must be afforded greater attention to ensure that the disparity between the unserved and served is progressively eliminated. Efforts to end inequalities in access to water and sanitation must be undertaken in a comprehensive manner, ensuring that communities are able to actively participate in the process and to convey their concerns and understandings about the services they are receiving and the services they want and need. Such participation should be carried out with full access to information, including information on the level of services that the participants are afforded compared to the services provided to other groups. 47. As a prerequisite step for achieving their minimum core obligation to ensure equal distribution of services, States must identify and monitor grounds of discrimination and the underlying structural causes of discrimination using disaggregated data. The specific set of grounds of discrimination prohibited by international human rights law provides helpful guidance on the variables that should be used in data disaggregation in order to identify and address persisting inequalities. V. Implementation of the obligation of progressive realization 48. The obligation of progressive realization reflects the need of States to move beyond the minimum levels of water and sanitation services and need to use the maximum of their available resources. That said, there is a notable absence of clarity regarding how these obligations are or can be translated into national realities in the water and sanitation sectors and how States’ adherence to these obligations can be properly monitored. Without clarity as to what constitutes the minimum core obligation of the human rights to water and sanitation and the concrete steps to fulfil the obligation of progressive realization, little has been done to explore the way States should implement their obligations under the 39 40 41 42 12 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 15, para. 37 (f). UNICEF, Strengthening Enabling Environment for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH): Guidance Note (May 2016). A/73/162. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 15, para. 37 (e).