“Ten years later, we haven’t ended modern slavery,” laments one expert

Ten years after the collapse of Rana Plaza, a building in Dhaka (Bangladesh) housed clothing workshops for various major Western brands. “We Have Not Ended Modern Slavery”, Monday, April 24, Anne-Catherine Husson Traray, Director of Nowethic, a media outlet that works on issues related to the environmental and social impacts of companies. On April 24, 2013, 1,130 people died when the building collapsed. Since then, France has adopted a law on the duty of awareness of companies, which obliges French manufacturers. “Enforcement of Human Rights throughout the Subcontracting Chain”Anne-Catherine Husson Traoré explains.

>> “Safety improved, not wage conditions”: Ten years on, has Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh changed “fast fashion”?

franceinfo: In your opinion, has this tragedy opened the eyes of Westerners?

Anne-Catherine Husson Drer: Yes, we can literally say that. The workers were forced to turn back as they refused to enter the building, which was not only standing but was in danger of collapsing. This is actually modern slavery and consumers don’t know. First reflection of companies [après le drame] It has to be said that they don’t know. Consumers have [eux] They understood that the small or big brand clothes they bought could come from this kind of material and so they presumably have some blood on their hands. This caused a rejection and it brought out a new type of customer, namely consumers who want traceability and want to guarantee that they do not have clothes responsible for this type of system.

After this tragedy, Bangladesh adopted a convention to protect workers. A framework inspects factories and requires big brands to pay their subcontractors to repair their sites. Have the working conditions of the workers improved since then?

There has been a global awareness of the necessary change. It can go through the law, but the law must apply to it. The problem we have today is that Bangladesh does not actually apply these terms. As with any law, it sounds good on paper but if there’s no way to enforce it, it’s a problem. Another fire occurred a few years later in Bangladesh [l’effondrement du Rana Plaza] In fact, it shows that working conditions were very dangerous.

Since 2017, France has had a law on the duty of care, responsible for subcontractors of large manufacturers, including foreign ones. Does it work?

It can also be the most important gain. A realization occurred [afin de savoir] What can we from the West do to try to control this infernal machine of the world’s factories, especially respecting human rights along the entire chain of subcontracting. The concept of the duty of vigilance was introduced by France, which was the first to adopt this type of law. There is one in Germany now, and if all goes well, there will be one across Europe in a few weeks.

“A company has an obligation to organize the prevention of environmental or social risks throughout its subcontracting chain. It must set up training and control its subcontracting chain. Due diligence changes the way globalization is viewed.”

Anne-Catherine Husson Drare, Novetik Director

At franceinfo

I’m not going to tell you that buyers aren’t always looking for the lowest price. All the ambiguity we have today is a contradictory mandate: on the one hand we must be vigilant, while on the other side of the world the purchasing system continues to be a social imposition.

With this duty of awareness, have big French businessmen already sponsored work in Bangladesh?

In France, this stakeholder drive to push companies to better respect human rights was very weak. Today we can clearly see that a type of textile has collapsed. Kamayu and Gap are in trouble today, and we can assume their troubles started there [avec l’effondrement du Rana Plaza en 2013]. They couldn’t sustain an economic model where we produce a lot while there are enough consumers to buy. The bad news after ten years is that instead of fast fashion, we have ultra-fast fashion. Ultra fast fashion is a textile production that is made in the same terrible conditions with the condemned windows of modern slavery. What’s worse is that fast fashion is getting closer to the end consumer. For example, in 2020, working conditions on the scale of modern slavery were discovered at a factory in the UK, causing an extraordinary scandal for Boohoo, which saw it lose 45% of its value. So ten years after Rana Plaza we still haven’t ended modern slavery.