Development cooperation in the light of the human rights to water and sanitation

Development cooperation remains a strong pillar for SDGs

Live aid, dead aid, or better aid [1]? The debate about the role of development cooperation in fostering sustainable development has not escaped its share of controversy. Whilst the international community [2] advocates for increasing the volume of aid flows to the world’s least-developed countries, others demand to reform, curtail, or stop it altogether. Over the decades, dissenting voices from economists such as Milton Friedman, Peter Bauer, William Easterly, Angus Deaton, and Dambisa Moyo have criticized the “aid business”, charging that it has perpetuated bad governments, undermined growth, and eroded the much-needed domestic investments. “Aid is not working”, as Moyo simply puts it, and other alternative approaches — such as trade, remittances, micro-finance and savings — are suggested.

Nonetheless, development cooperation [3] remains a crucial pillar for the implementation and financing of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is particularly true for the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector. As revealed by the latest GLAAS report [4], although external aid represents less than 15% of total WASH funding sources, many countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia and Solomon Islands remain dependent on grants and repayable financing. Furthermore, given the nearly 60% funding gap in the WASH sector (seen in Figure 1), development cooperation is gaining more devoted attention for its potential to help reach national targets for drinking-water and sanitation coverage.

Figure 1. Funding gaps, in USD millions, between identified needs and available financing for WASH, for urban and rural sanitation and drinking-water. (Source: 2019 GLAAS report)

Development cooperation has not targeted the strategic needs of the WASH sector

But is more development cooperation always good for the WASH sector? Not necessarily. Inequalities and discriminatory practices in WASH services can lie at the heart of development cooperation, and impede sustainable and equitable progress. For instance, the breakdown of development aid among different types of services reveals some mismatch between allocated resources and identified needs. First, notwithstanding a much larger deficit in sanitation than drinking-water [5], significantly less aid is allocated to sanitation (37% versus 63% according to the 2019 GLAAS report). Second, urban aid expenditures are more than threefold greater than rural expenditures, despite lower access to WASH services in rural areas [6]. Third, even though basic water and sanitation systems [7] are more likely to reach underserved populations — due to their relatively low cost and accessibility –, they represent only one fifth of the total water and sanitation aid disbursements. Fourth and finally, few development aid is dedicated to strengthening country systems, or to improving sector governance, capacity and monitoring.

Therefore, if not conceived and implemented properly, development cooperation projects can adversely impact the water and sanitation sector, and, most importantly, people’s rights to water and sanitation [8]. Funders must pay attention to how their decisions impact the realization of those rights, and commit themselves to establish and undertake policies and programmes that respect them. Indeed, as clearly stated by the Special Rapporteur on the human rights to drinking water and sanitation in his 2016 and 2017 reports on the role of development cooperation, State funders have obligations to respect human rights in other countries, to refrain from actions that interfere with the enjoyment of the rights to water and sanitation, and to facilitate the realization of those rights through the provision of water supply and sanitation services, financial and technical assistance and necessary aid. Furthermore, when members of international or regional organizations such as the World Bank or the United Nations Children’s Fund, States have the obligation to realize the human rights to water and sanitation through policy, decision-making processes and the activities of those organizations.

The “human rights development cycle” approach

The question thus becomes: how can funders fulfil their obligations in the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation? The answer can be found in the “human rights development cycle” put forward by the Special Rapporteur, and illustrated in Figure 2. The underlying idea is simple: funders should align the life cycle of development cooperation with the human rights to water and sanitation. This way, as highlighted by the Special Rapporteur, funders can place guarantees and safeguards to ensure that their development cooperation will fully incorporate human rights. Indeed, a human rights development cycle can help funders entrench human rights principles and standards in each stage (as seen in Table 1), and, ultimately, improve their capacity to contribute to the progressive realization of the human rights to water and sanitation.

Figure 2. “Human rights development cycle” framework [9]. (Source: the Special Rapporteur’s 2017 report on development cooperation)

Table 1. Stages of the “human rights development cycle” framework proposed by the Special Rapporteur, with some examples. (Source: summarized from the Special Rapporteur’s 2017 report on development cooperation)

A human rights-based development cooperation is not the norm

However, as exposed by the Special Rapporteur after examining six [10] different funders’ policies, operational tools, and project instruments, the human rights framework is not always adequately incorporated in their development agendas. In his words, while some funders’ policies consider the human rights framework, particularly the human rights to water and sanitation, others are only sporadically aligned with those rights and reveal varying degrees of clarity regarding their application to development cooperation. Similarly, while most funders’ project assessments are mostly focused on attainment of project objectives and sustainability of services, a specific human rights-based assessment during and upon completion of projects was not observed.

The conclusion? The content of the human rights to water and sanitation must be at the centre of development cooperation

Coming back to the first question raised — live aid, dead aid or better aid? –, the response, in the context of water and sanitation services, seems obvious: aid is still alive, although a little malnourished. In order to be fully healthy, funders’ must incorporate the normative content and cross-cutting principles of the human rights to water and sanitation into their policies, strategies and operations, as well as apply them in the project selection, design, implementation, assessment, and monitoring. Only then will development cooperation really contribute to achieving the 2030 Agenda’s aim of leaving no one behind.

*This post was prepared as part of the 2020 campaign to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the UN General Assembly on the human right to water and sanitation: a campaign by the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.

For more information on the campaign see here.

Footnotes:

[1] This question was first posed in 2010 by Beate Lohnert and Theo Rauch in their research article “Live aid, dead aid, better aid? The reinvention of development cooperation”.

[2] Target 17.2 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals aims at the full implementation of official development assistance (ODA) by developed countries, and them reaching certain proportions of aid relative to their gross national income (GNI): 0.7 per cent of ODA/GNI to developing countries, and 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries.

[3] The term “development cooperation” has many different meanings. Sometimes it is synonym of financial aid, or official development assistance (ODA), while others it is defined more broadly to include, for instance, market flows. Here, development cooperation comprises all actions such as grants, loans, debt forgiveness, technical and programming support, and policy advice from funders to partner States.

[4] The Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) is a UN-Water initiative aimed at providing policy- and decision-makers with a reliable, comprehensive and global analysis of the investments and enabling environment to make informed decisions for WASH.

[5] According to latest estimates from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (JMP), nearly three out of ten people rely on limited, unimproved and no sanitation services, whereas in water the figure is less dismal (one out of ten).

[6] According to the JMP estimates, nearly eight out of ten people still lacking even basic drinking-water and sanitation services lived in rural areas.

[7] Basic drinking-water systems include rural water supply schemes using hand pumps, spring catchments, gravity-fed systems, rainwater collection, storage tanks, small distribution systems typically with shared connections/points of use and urban schemes using hand pumps and local neighborhood networks including those with shared connections. Basic sanitation systems are defined as latrines, on-site disposal and alternative sanitation systems, including the promotion of household and community investments in the construction of these facilities. On the other hand, large systems are defined as large urban distribution networks and/or treatment facilities.

[8] Water and sanitation were recognized explicitly as human rights since the United Nations General Assembly (resolution A/RES/64/292) and the Human Rights Council (resolution A/HRC/RES/15/9) in 2010.

[9] The “human rights development cycle” framework constitutes a non-linear approach, since stages are not necessarily sequential.

[10] In his 2017 report, the Special Rapporteur examined six funders: France and Japan (State funders), the European Union (a regional integration organization), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) (international financial institutions) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (a United Nations agency).

Further reading materials:

• Friendly version of the Special Rapporteur’s report on development cooperation (EN, FR, ES)
• Official version of the Special Rapporteur’s report: first report and second report
• Statement made by the Special Rapporteur introducing the report to the 71st session of the UN General Assembly and the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly
• Quiz on development cooperation