Remembering Rana Plaza: Bangladesh has changed. The narrative has not.

Today, the fashion industry remembers Rana Plaza.

It should.

On 24 April 2013, 1,134 people were killed in the deadliest disaster the garment industry has ever seen. Rana Plaza was not simply a building collapse. It was a moral collapse across global supply chains, exposing what happens when speed, low cost and distance from risk are allowed to define the system.

I write this as a manufacturer in Bangladesh, and as someone who has watched the industry here change from the inside.

And that change has been far more significant than the global narrative suggests.

Rana Plaza forced a reckoning. It exposed failures in safety, governance and sourcing culture. It also made one thing clear: if Bangladesh was going to remain central to global fashion, trust would have to be rebuilt through real, measurable change.

More than a decade later, there is another truth we must confront.

Resilience isn’t built by avoiding failure, it’s built by being forced to fix it, publicly, repeatedly, and at scale.

That is what the past decade has been about. Not perfection. Not completion. But sustained, visible change under scrutiny.

Since 2013, just under 4,000 export-oriented factories in Bangladesh have been inspected through joint national and international safety programmes. The Accord brought a level of scrutiny and enforceable remediation the sector had never seen before. By October 2018, more than 122,000 safety violations had been identified across covered factories, with around 90% confirmed as remediated.

That scale of response is still too often overlooked. It did not happen by accident. It happened because regulation, buyer pressure, public scrutiny and enforceable mechanisms changed the operating environment.

And yet, the narrative has not kept pace with that reality.

That regulatory trajectory is still evolving. Labour governance frameworks have continued to develop, with ongoing reforms aimed at strengthening worker protections, representation, and enforcement capacity. Progress is not linear, but it is visible.

The same is true environmentally. Bangladesh is now home to the most LEED-certified green factories globally, including over half of the world’s top 100 highest-rated green factories. That is not a symbolic achievement. It reflects years of capital investment in water efficiency, energy systems, waste handling, factory design and operational discipline.It also reflects a broader shift in mindset. In the strongest factories, sustainability is no longer treated as a reporting requirement for buyers. It is increasingly part of industrial strategy.

The biggest shift is not only in safety or sustainability. It is in manufacturing maturity.

Too often, Bangladesh is still discussed as a low-cost sourcing market with a tragic past. That framing is no longer sufficient.

Bangladesh remains one the second largest apparel exporter. The industry did not improve by becoming peripheral. It improved while remaining central to global supply chains. The strongest factories here are no longer competing on price alone. They are competing on control, consistency, technical capability and resilience. They are being judged on whether they can meet a more demanding standard of supply chain partnership.

That matters now because sourcing is changing and perception plays a direct role in where that sourcing goes.

Regulatory developments in Europe, including the evolving Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, are increasing expectations on how companies identify, manage and disclose risks in their supply chains.

The direction is clear. Visibility, accountability and risk management are becoming central to sourcing decisions.Bangladesh’s strongest factories are better positioned for that shift than the country’s reputation would suggest.

At Harnest, I see that first-hand. Customers increasingly want evidence of control, accountability and operational discipline, not just capacity and cost. That is a very different conversation from the one Bangladesh was having a decade ago.

None of this means the industry has solved its problems.

It has not.

Wages remain a critical issue relative to living costs. Progress on labour standards cannot be separated from purchasing practices. Suppliers cannot be expected to absorb the cost of higher standards while margins continue to be compressed.

Progress has also been uneven. The formal, export-facing segment of the sector has advanced the most. Smaller subcontracting units and informal workplaces still carry risk. The top tier has changed significantly, but that standard is not yet universal.

So Bangladesh does not need a simplified success story. It needs an honest one. Rana Plaza should never be softened or forgotten. The point is not to replace tragedy with complacency. The point is to recognise that Bangladesh is responding to that trauma through one of the most intensive reform efforts the apparel industry has seen anywhere. Safety systems are improving. Environmental performance is improving. Regulation is being strengthened, governance is evolving, and investment is growing. And some of the strongest factories in this country are helping define what the future of fashion supply chains can look like. To argue that Bangladesh is still frozen in 2013 is no longer a fair assessment and it overlooks more than a decade of visible industrial change.

From where I stand, Rana Plaza’s legacy should not be a permanent stigma attached to Bangladesh. It should be proof that an industry under pressure can change, and that when regulation, investment and accountability come together, manufacturing can become safer, more modern and more responsible.

Bangladesh has changed. The narrative has not.

The real question is whether sourcing decisions are ready to catch up.