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Fair conditions?

June 3, 2013

The deaths of hundreds of people in unsafe factories in Bangladesh and Cambodia have thrown the spotlight on working conditions in developing countries - and the western retailers that benefit from them.

https://p.dw.com/p/18bWg
Bangladeshi relatives hold photos of the missing and dead workers three days after an eight-storey building collapsed in Dhaka on April 27, 2013 (Photo: Munir Uz Zaman)
Image: MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images

When an unsafe garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed last month, claiming over a thousand lives, it not only sparked widespread unrest in the country - culminating in violent protests - it also put sustainability in the global textile industry back on the agenda.

A deal signed by 31 mainly European retail chains pledged to make garment factories safer in the country, but a similar incident in a Cambodian sneaker factory - where two people were killed and 10 injured - showed that the problem is deeper and cannot be solved overnight. We take a closer look.