Ten years later, fast-fashion multinationals are making efforts but NGOs are still demanding real legal constraints.

A long greyish building collapsed, lifeless and dusty bodies, mutilated for life: the images of Rana Plaza, which housed garment factories in Dhaka for various major Western brands (Benetton, Primark, Walmart, Auchan, C&A, etc.), moved international opinion.

This "Titanic of fashion", as Catherine Dauriac, president of Fashion Revolution France, an offshoot of an international collective born after the disaster, called it, was the catalyst for a pioneering French law, in 2017, on the duty of vigilance of companies.

The European Union is working on legislation inspired by this, which would target violations of human and social rights, as well as environmental damage to European companies in their production chain.

A dozen proceedings have since been launched by NGOs, against groups such as Casino, Yves Rocher, Suez... A first judicial decision, in February, however, rejected the associations that attacked TotalEnergies and its oil megaproject in Uganda and Tanzania.

Lack of signatories

In Bangladesh, a month after the disaster, an agreement on the monitoring of the safety of garment factories was signed between unions and garment multinationals. Since 2023, it has been officially extended to Pakistan.

Under the aegis of the International Labour Organization (ILO), it forces some 200 signatories (including H&M, Zara, Primark, Uniqlo...) to finance an independent factory inspection system, describes Nayla Ajaltouni, general delegate of the collective Ethics on the label.

Rescue operation after the Rana Plaza textile factory building collapses on April 24, 2013 in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh © Munir UZ ZAMAN / AFP/Archives

Since 2014, 1,600 factories have been renovated and secured in Bangladesh (about half of the park), according to her.

But some major groups have not signed, including Walmart, Ikea, Amazon, Levi's, Auchan, denounces Ms. Ajaltouni.

Questioned by AFP, the Spanish group Inditex, parent company of Zara, which counts 930,000 workers employed in local companies working for it, says it did not wait for this tragedy to conduct audits at its suppliers and has accelerated its evaluation procedures since.

He recalls, like H&M and Uniqlo, that he did not have a workshop at Rana Plaza.

The Swedish giant also says it has been making public since 2013 information about its partner factories (spinning and manufacturing).

And Japan's Uniqlo points to a training programme launched in 2019 for women wishing to become supervisors in Bangladesh, with the support of UN Women.

Women work at a garment factory in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, on April 13, 2023 in Bangladesh © Munir uz ZAMAN / AFP

For its part, the Irish Primark ensures continue to financially support hundreds of victims, to the tune of "more than 14 million dollars to date". The company says it has conducted or had conducted 2,400 audits in 2021.

Questionable audits

This "massive use of social audits" has "limits", warns Laura Bourgeois, in charge of litigation and advocacy at Sherpa.

In addition to the financial link between the auditor and the multinational that commissioned the audit, the manager denounces "interviews between auditors and workers organized on site or in the presence of the manager", or even "rigged audits with factories a little set up from scratch".

In addition, "there is a shortcut that is made between the announcement of an audit" and the corrective actions actually taken.

Visitors to an exhibition marking the 10th anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, on April 12, 2023 in Dhaka, Bangladesh © Munir uz ZAMAN / AFP

For Nayla Ajaltouni, the recent emergence of ultra fast fashion and its products with ever lower costs is "a sign of the failure of corporate social responsibility. SheIn is an illustration of the lack of regulation of fashion."

This Chinese online seller, which cuts croupières to fast fashion brands with very cheap clothes, is regularly questioned for the manufacturing conditions of its products. He did not respond to AFP's requests for comment.

Sandra Cossart, she teases companies that play "a double game, appearing respectful (...) but spending a lot of resources, including financial and human resources, through their lobbies to unravel all these laws".

Recruited by civil society, "they have realized" that they had to change, but legally, it "is still premature to say" that they are more responsible.

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© 2023 AFP