[N]early 250 global brands and retailers have joined either the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and its union partners or the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Through these collective initiatives, the companies have inspected some 2,800 factories and encouraged a series of remedial steps to address unsafe circumstances in those factories. They are not, however, panaceas. Today they cover only about 2,300 active factories serving their member companies. The Bangladeshi government separately retains oversight for another 1,650 or so. But this still leaves out a very large number of additional factories—and their workers... The Accord has announced it will continue provisionally for up to three additional years, through 2021. Once the foreign-run programs pull out, the Bangladeshi government will inherit responsibility for all factories and workers... [W]e propose... that an array of international actors, which involves global brands and retailers, governments from Western Europe and North America, international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, civil society organizations, labor representatives, and philanthropic groups,... joins with Bangladeshi stakeholders to form a “shared responsibility” task force whose members would contribute needed funds to ensure the repair of all garment factories in the country. 

The Center for Business and Human Rights has identified two broad gaps in factory safety where significant resources still need to be applied. First, there are unsafe conditions in factories that are not covered by the Accord or Alliance but instead are overseen by the government of Bangladesh under its National Initiative. Second, unsafe circumstances exist in many of the subcontracting factories that are not covered by the Accord, Alliance, or National Initiative.