A/71/302 people. If their knowledge and expectations are not incorporated in the processes, development cooperation in the water and sanitation sector can never improve their access to water, sanitation and hygiene in a manner consistent with their human rights. National ownership is particularly crucial for the sustainability of development. 18. Access to information allows people to meaningfully participate in decision making and empowers them to claim their rights and hold duty-bearers accountable. III. Patterns and trends in development cooperation for water and sanitation A. Overview of development cooperation in the water and sanitation sector 19. Development cooperation 5 has increased steadily since the 1990s. Between 2010 and 2014, the gross monetary value of grants, loans and technical advice disbursed to all sectors was approximately $791 billion, an average of $158 billion annually. 6 It is estimated that development cooperation in the water supply and sanitation sector increased by 12.3 per cent between 2006 and 2014, with a gross disbursement of $7.2 billion in 2014, corresponding to approximately 4 per cent of disbursements to all sectors that year. 7 Data show that between 2010 and 2014, $43.7 billion was committed to the water supply and sanitation sector. The top 10 funders, which provided nearly 80 per cent of total funding for water supply and sanitation projects in the period 2010-2014, included: the International Development Association/World Bank Group (17.4 per cent), Japan (15.5 per cent), Germany (12.2 per cent), European Union institutions (8.7 per cent), France (7.5 per cent), the United States of America (4.9 per cent), the special funds of the Asian Development Bank (3.8 per cent), the African Development Fund (3.1 per cent), the Republic of Korea (3.0 per cent) and the Netherlands (2.9 per cent). 20. Nevertheless, the overall global increase in funding to the sector masks significant annual variations in disbursed funds and funding modalities. Regarding funding commitments, for the 2010-2012 period, 41 per cent of aid commitments were grants and 59 per cent were concessional loans. 8 In addition, critical reviews of development cooperation flows indicate that the available data o n those flows may be fragmented at best. 9 That could be due in part to a lack of collaboration between funders to provide consolidated, reliable, accurate and disaggregated data. Regarding disaggregation, the majority of development projects registered in the relevant database of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development __________________ 5 6 7 8 9 16-13590 Although some of the data included in this section are presented in the original sources as “official development assistance”, they are designated in the present report by the term “development cooperation”, as explained in footnote 3. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Creditor Reporting System, available from https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=CRS1 (accessed 2 August 2016). Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Creditor Reporting System: Water, available from http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=58195 (accessed 22 July 2016). See World Health Organization (WHO), UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water: GLAAS 2014 Report — Investing in Water and Sanitation: Increasing Access, Reducing Inequalities (Geneva, 2014). See William Easterly and Tobias Pfutze, “Where does the money go? Best and worst practices in foreign aid”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 22, No. 2 (Spring 2008). 7/24