Together with King’s College, London the Garment Supply Chain Governance Project organized a workshop on “5 Years after Rana Plaza: Consequences for Labor Standards Improvements in Garment Supply Chains” at Freie Universität Berlin on April 27-28, 2018. The workshop intended to remember the 5th year anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh and reflect on its consequences. Given the high and immediate policy relevance of this topic, the conference was not just purely academic: several representatives from lead firms, supplier factories, policy makers and civil society actively participated in debating and interpreting the research results, and also constituted the strong opening panel.
Dr Shahidur Rahman’s paper seeks to address whether the promises of the Accord and the Alliance are being met and attempts to locate the notion of shared responsibilities. The research findings show that the RMG industry has been going through a transition stage in post- Rana Plaza regime and the garment entrepreneurs as well as the Accord and the Alliance have encountered different challenges because of the experimental nature of this transnational governance approach. This paper argued that though there are 'significant breakthrough' in terms of developing the culture of safety parameter within the government and entrepreneurs’ mindset, however, the absence of 'core responsibilities' from buyers posed challenges of the sustainability of this governance mechanisms.