The Atlantic

What’s Changed Since More Than 1,110 People Died at Rana Plaza?

The two initiatives meant to make Bangladesh’s garment industry safer expire in a year—but the work won’t be finished by then.
Source: A.M. Ahad / AP

Four years ago, Rana Plaza—an eight-story building in Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka that housed several factories producing clothing for brands such as the Children’s Place, J.C. Penney, and Walmart—came crashing down, killing approximately 1,130 people and injuring thousands more. In the wake of the disaster, companies, trade unions, and workers’-rights groups agreed to make the buildings safer and improve conditions for employees within five years; in many factories, this meant things like adding sprinkler systems or emergency exits. But now, with only one year left, there’s still much to be done.

The Rana Plaza collapse prompted two initiatives to improve conditions at the Bangladeshi factories that do business with several Western brands; there are thousands of such factories in the country, whose garment industry does about $28 billion in business each year. Those , the Accord on Fire and Building

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