A/HRC/36/45 infrastructural, environmental and resource costs, and ensuring affordability. Economic perspectives and human rights perspectives are possible to reconcile, requiring from regulatory actors innovative approaches and a redesign of economic instruments in some situations. 9. Accountability 61. In order to be effective, regulatory frameworks should allow for independent monitoring of service providers’ compliance with the human rights to water and sanitation and should safeguard the right of individuals to submit complaints when the enjoyment of their rights to water and sanitation has been compromised. 30 Regulatory frameworks should impose appropriate and proportionate sanctions on service providers in cases of noncompliance with the normative content of the human rights to water and sanitation. 31 B. Monitoring implementation 62. Monitoring is essential for understanding current levels of access to water and sanitation services — by focusing on issues such as affordability and water quality, identifying barriers to access for unserved or underserved populations, and ensuring that participatory processes are inclusive. National and local monitoring processes gather information that helps identify drivers and bottlenecks, highlight gaps, and assess strengths and challenges, and as such are essential for the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation. 63. Regulatory actors play an essential role in monitoring service providers’ compliance with the normative content of the human rights to water and sanitation. Access to information is crucial in this process. Regulatory actors must be able to collect, analyse and disseminate accurate information on the performance of all service providers. On the other hand, service providers have the responsibility to provide to regulatory actors complete and reliable information on the services, including on their quality, on complaints received from users and on challenges faced in extending services to poorer areas. 64. Monitoring should not only examine compliance of service providers with national and local standards, but should also assess whether the provision of services is carried out in a way that ensures compliance with international human rights obligations such as equality and non-discrimination, participation, access to information and accountability. Regulatory actors are responsible for setting and monitoring indicators of progress towards the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation, which should reflect human rights principles and standards in a direct way. Indicators should cover all the different elements of the rights to water and sanitation and be disaggregated by prohibited grounds of discrimination,32 while setting specific benchmarks (feasible targets for gradually meeting the indicators) in relation to each indicator. 65. The principle of progressive realization should guide the monitoring process and any retrogression observed in service provision should be prohibited and sanctioned by the regulatory framework. 1. Formal service providers 66. Regulatory frameworks are often only applied to formal service providers, which may range from large-scale utilities to small municipal and cooperative providers. Where formal provision exists, it is expected that there will be available data on standards and targets set, which can be monitored by a regulatory actor. However, small municipal and cooperative providers often have more difficulties in living up to quality standards than large-scale utilities do. Regulatory actors can play a proactive role in enhancing small-scale 30 31 32 Ibid., art. 4.4. Ibid., art. 4.9. See Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights general comment No. 15, para. 53. 15