It took 90 seconds for the eight-story building to be reduced to a pile of rubble.
By the time the search for survivors ended, 1,134 workers were dead and thousands more were injured or maimed.
Thirteen years after Rana Plaza collapsed outside Dhaka on the morning of April 24, 2013, it remains the deadliest disaster in garment industry history—and a chilling reminder of what happens when corporate accountability is absent in global supply chains.
What followed was an unprecedented rallying of more than 200 mostly European fashion brands, including high-profile names such as H&M Group and Zara owner Inditex, to sign what would become the Fire and Building Safety Accord in Bangladesh, a binding agreement that for the first time held them liable for structural, fire and electrical safety in supplier factories.
The original pact has since evolved into the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry, a broader framework that extended its legally binding safety model to Pakistan in 2023. In doing so, it transitioned the Accord from an emergency response into an institutionalized standard that covers nearly 3 million workers across more than 2,200 factories.
But while the current term of the Bangladesh Safety Agreement expires in December, the work of ensuring safe factories with “secure exits, clear evacuation routes, unlockable and certified fire doors, structurally sound buildings, functioning alarms and effective emergency preparedness” is far from over, the International Accord’s Amsterdam-based secretariat said in a statement urging a renewal.
As of December 2025, more than 1,000 Bangladeshi factories were behind schedule on remediations, with 46 yet to finalize their corrective action plans.
“For over a decade, the efforts of brands, trade unions, factories and civil society partners under the Accord have contributed to safety improvements at more than 2,000 garment and textile factories in Bangladesh,” it said. “At the same time, hundreds of factories have yet to fully remediate identified safety hazards, resulting in ongoing risks.”
Nor has justice entirely been served: Though Rana Plaza’s owner, Sohel Rana, remains behind bars, at least 19 civil and criminal cases tied to the collapse are still pending in labor and criminal courts, according to the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust. Fourteen remain in trial courts, while five writ petitions await hearings before the High Court Division of the Supreme Court.
Injured workers and the families of victims, too, have yet to receive adequate compensation, said Md. Borkot Ali, director of BLAST. He called compensation provisions under the Bangladesh Labour Act—which range from 200,000 Bangladeshi taka ($1,630) in cases of death to 250,000 taka ($2,038) for permanent total disability—“grossly inadequate.”
“All Rana Plaza-related cases must be fast-tracked to ensure justice for victims and accountability of those responsible,” he said in a statement.
Like Bangladesh, Pakistan has known its share of tragedy. Months before Rana Plaza dominated global attention, a catastrophic fire razed Ali Enterprises on Sept. 11, 2012. Trapped behind barred windows and locked exit doors, 256 garment workers died, many from smoke inhalation. Another 50 were injured after leaping from upper-story windows considered too high to require bars.
“They prevented people from leaving, so they could save the clothes,” one survivor told local media.
The business realities that led to both the collapse and fire persist today. Just last October, a fatal fire and chemical explosion tore through Anwar Fashions in Dhaka’s Mirpur area, killing at least 16 people, among them a 14-year-old girl, after a locked roof exit blocked their escape. That same month, six workers suffered severe burns in an explosion in a gas meter room shared by two adjoining garment factories, M.S. Dyeing, Printing & Finishing and Fair Apparels, in Fatullah. In November, about 200 workers at two factories in Gazipur—Fashion Pulse and Denimach—were injured when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake triggered a crush, allegedly worsened by locked emergency exits and main gates.
Together, these incidents underscore how the most vulnerable workers—those in smaller, unregistered or unmonitored facilities—“remain trapped in the same deadly cycle,” the Asia Floor Wage Alliance said in a press release. For every brand that signed the Accord, hundreds of others still rely on voluntary commitments and self-regulation.
“Rana Plaza was not an isolated accident but the predictable outcome of a global garment supply chain model that externalizes costs, suppresses labor rights, and prioritizes production targets and profits over human life,” the alliance of trade unions, NGOs, and labor rights organizations said.
“The root causes remain,” it added. “Unsafe factories and infrastructure; subcontracting practices that shield brands from accountability; weak safety standard inspection and enforcement; anti-union practices that silence workers and repress the right to freedom of association; a system of exploitation and violence that disproportionately affects a predominantly female workforce and brand purchasing practices that transfer risk and cost onto suppliers and workers.”
Over the next week, the Clean Clothes Campaign—the industry’s largest consortium of trade unions and civil society organizations—will ramp up its pressure on international brands it’s accused of “freeriding” under the Accord, such as Decathlon, Wrangler and Ikea. It will also target Hugo Boss and LPP for failing to renew their commitment to the Pakistan Safety Agreement despite contracting factories still addressing life-threatening risks like lockable gates and blocked exits.
Ikea has said it prefers its own internal safety audit program, known as IWAY, which it describes as rigorous even though critics argue that its lack of independent oversight and legally binding enforcement renders it toothless compared to the Accord’s collective model. A Hugo Boss spokesperson said the brand will work closely with its partners to conduct “targeted” human rights assessments and social compliance audits, alongside monitoring through its accredited membership in the Fair Labor Association. The other companies did not respond to requests for comment.
On Tuesday, Labour Behind the Label escalated its campaign against Hugo Boss with a protest outside a Boss store in London. The U.K. workers’ rights group called the company’s decision to “walk away” from the Pakistan Safety Agreement a “reckless step backward,” one that endangers workers’ lives and signals to other brands that responsibility is optional.
“Across the industry, workers continue to pay with their lives when brands like Hugo Boss ignore safety concerns,” Anna Bryher, its policy lead, said in a statement. “No one should die for fashion. Refusing to sign means active harm to workers.”
Further protests targeting Hugo Boss are planned in Belgium and Germany as part of a wider mobilization. Justice, she added, must be ongoing, not a one-off response.
Meanwhile, the Clean Clothes Campaign wants to widen the Bangladesh program’s scope. The current agreement covers only final-stage garment production, leaving workers in fabric production—including spinning, washing and dyeing—as well as home textiles and accessories unprotected. Broader coverage, free from employer interference and inclusive of heat stress and other climate-related health and safety hazards, will save more lives, it said.
“All 290 brands and retailers that signed the Accord together with the signatory unions have a say in how the program is run, they should push for this successful program to protect even more workers by expanding its scope to other facilities handling their garments and to protect their workers from heat stress, as well as ensure the Accord operations are free from employer interference,” Ineke Zeldenrust, the Clean Clothes Campaign’s international coordinator, said in a statement.
A safe workplace is a right, not a privilege, added Nasir Mansoor, general secretary of the National Trade Union Federation of Pakistan.
“Textile and garments factories have shown criminal negligence in matters concerning workers’ health, safety, and protection of life, and international fashion brands are fully complicit in this crime,” Mansoor said in a statement. “No lessons have been learned from tragic disasters such as Rana Plaza and Ali Enterprises. The greed for profit has turned workplaces into death traps for workers. The need of the hour is to make workplaces safe for work.”
