This KARA article revisits the Rana Plaza factory collapse through the eyes of child workers and victims’ children, showing how weak corporate responsibility scars young lives long after the rubble is cleared.
Global value chains and fast‑fashion business models do not just “reflect” child labour in countries like Bangladesh – they help design it into the system. Research by Eshanee Singh, Michael Nielsen and the CLARISSA programme shows how multinational buyers, through relentless pressure for lower prices and faster production, push risks and costs down onto informal workshops and necessity‑driven family businesses, where employing children often becomes the only way to survive. Instead of treating child labour as a distant cultural problem, this work makes clear that it is a predictable outcome of corporate decisions in boardrooms and purchasing offices, and that real change will come only when citizens, consumers and investors demand supply chains that value children’s lives more than shareholders’ dividends.
Fast fashion isn’t just cheap—it’s costing children their childhoods. From cotton fields to perfume flowers to luxury jewelry, kids are working long hours in dangerous conditions so brands can protect profits. Learn how the fashion industry still relies on child labour and what you can do to stop it.