Solidarity Financing Mechanisms
     
     
 


Why?

In the world, 1.6 billion people do not have access to safe water and 2.4 billion lack access to basic sanitation (1). Yet the right to water is recognised in the "International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights", signed by 66 countries in its "General Comment 15".
Organisations such as the OECD estimate that the additional funds required to reach the Millennium Development Goal targets of reducing these figures by half before 2015 would require further investment of 10 to 30 billion US$ per year.

Among the possible sources of funding, solidarity financing mechanisms have a clear role to play. In a world where wealth and poverty exist side by side, where areas of abundance lie next to areas of scarcity and where the cost of investment and maintenance of water and sanitation services remain inaccessible to the majority, solidarity is, and shall remain, essential to ensuring access to basic services for all.
1 - WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme