Bangladesh is no stranger to disasters, both natural and man-made. Still, this is one of the saddest chapters since we won our independence in 1971, precisely because the tragedy could easily have been prevented. Structural weaknesses had been found but not fixed. The victims were among the most vulnerable in our society — hardworking people making an honest, but meager, living. Many died manufacturing clothing for Western brands.

I appreciate the unease a Westerner might feel knowing that the clothes on his or her back were stitched together by people working long hours in dangerous conditions. It is natural that people in richer countries are now asking how they can put pressure on Bangladesh and its manufacturers to improve the country’s dismal safety record.

But ceasing the purchase of Bangladeshi-manufactured goods, as some have suggested, would not be the compassionate course of action. Economic opportunities from the garment industry have played an important role in making social change possible in my country, with about three million women now working in the garment sector. I have dedicated my life to alleviating entrenched poverty, and I know that boycotting brands that do business in Bangladesh might only further impoverish those who most need to put food on their tables, since the foreign brands would simply take their manufacturing contracts to other countries.

Photo: Reuters

The rise of manufacturing here has had good effects. In the past, for example, a poor family’s vision for a newborn daughter’s future was often to marry her off as young as possible, since the dowry paid to a husband’s family grows as a daughter gets older. Even after the dowry was outlawed in 1980, the practice continued. A girl would often be married off as young as 13, and would never leave her village, never know a brighter future for herself or her children.

Partly because many women and their daughters now take garment industry jobs — even in factories where workers’ rights are virtually nonexistent — families living in poverty have changed their vision of the future. More have acquired long-term goals, like educating their sons and daughters, saving and taking microloans to start new businesses, and building and maintaining more sanitary living spaces.

Many outsiders think only of calamity when they hear the word Bangladesh — of factory fires, cyclones, floods and poverty. But the true Bangladesh is also the birthplace of microfinance and home to a robust civil society. It has seen rapid gains in living standards: maternal mortality is one-quarter of what it was in 1990; early childhood mortality is one-fifth of what it was in 1980, and we have eliminated the gender gap in primary and secondary school enrollment.

These remarkable gains will mean little if we allow tragedies like the one at Savar to continue. The law must work for everyone, rich and poor, landless laborer and factory owner alike. We must not allow those who benefit from the exploitation of the vulnerable to continue to treat life so cheaply.

Photo: bdnews24.com

What, then, is the solution? The changes must come first from Bangladesh itself. My country will require new political will to hold accountable those who willingly put human lives at such grave risk. It will also require the support of factory owners; civil society organizations, including my own; and the private sector, including Western buyers.

The solutions start with the workers themselves; they must be allowed by their employers to unionize, so they can engage in collective bargaining and hold their employers responsible for basic standards of pay and safety. Their organized power is the only thing that can stand up to the otherwise unaccountable nexus of business owners and politicians, who are often one and the same.

Western buyers, instead of squeezing factory owners on price, should finance better safety standards. The point needs to be made in the marketplace overseas that safety improvements are not so expensive that they can be used as an excuse for raising prices to the consumer. And consumers who are shocked by the working conditions need to realize that a playing field where the price tag is the only standard for a purchase is not a level one when workers’ lives are at stake.

At the same time, the owners themselves cannot be let off the hook, for there is no excuse for criminal negligence. But they cannot be trusted to voluntarily do all that they might. In a country with 100,000 factories in and near the capital, and three million workers in its garment industry, an inspection force numbering 18 people only invites unconscionable lapses on the part of unscrupulous employers. The inspection force must be increased drastically, and it must vigorously enforce safety standards.

The government, finally, must stop neglecting worker safety issues, even as it steps up enforcement. But that will be extremely difficult to accomplish as long as there is an unholy web of employers and politicians colluding to avoid responsibility for criminal negligence; that, in the end, is what trapped thousands of workers in the flimsy factory building that collapsed on them in Savar. Those workers cannot be forgotten until these issues are resolved.

“Made in Bangladesh” should be a mark of pride, not shame. Bangladeshi civil society stands ready to work with the authorities to make this so. In the 1970s, during the early years of my country’s nationhood, Bangladesh was suffused with the energy of the struggle for independence, a yearning for freedom from exploitation. From this energy came microfinance, community health work, and other social innovations that, combined with new economic opportunities in export industries like textiles, have transformed the lives of tens of millions of poor people, particularly women.

Today I grieve with my fellow countrymen, but I also raise my voice to say that this must not continue. As we mourn our losses, let us rekindle that spirit of liberation.

(The article was first published in New York Times)

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Fazle Hasan Abed is the founder and chairperson of BRAC.

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed with students of a BRAC primary school. Photo courtesy: BRAC.

The year 2012 marks forty years of BRAC’s existence. In these four decades since its inception in February 1972 as a small relief and rehabilitation project in a remote corner of Bangladesh, BRAC has grown to become the largest and one of the most successful development organisations in the world. This watershed moment therefore provides an opportunity for us to reflect on these last 40 years and look ahead to the challenges that will confront us in the years ahead.

Having come into formal existence within months of each other, BRAC’s story is inextricably linked to Bangladesh’s story. When BRAC started its journey in the immediate aftermath of our War of Liberation, Bangladesh was a country in ruin. Whatever little infrastructure there was had been destroyed during the nine month war, and the economy was left in shambles. Although the odds were many, and seemingly insurmountable, we felt that if we could tap into the palpable sense of optimism in those early days of our nation, and effectively channel the amazing resilience of our people, we would be able to overcome those challenges. We understood that if we could help people to realize their potential, that they would be their own actors in history, and write their own stories of triumph over adversity.

Over the last forty years, the people of this country have written those stories over and over again. In almost every major indicator of human development, Bangladesh’s progress has been remarkable. Let me highlight just a few.

At the time of our independence, our health indicators were some of the worst in the world. Today, the progress we have made is the envy of most of the developing nations in South Asia and beyond. In these last 40 years, infant mortality in Bangladesh has come down from 200 to less than 50, maternal mortality from 800 to less than 200, and average life expectancy at birth has risen from 40 to 65. Fertility, which was as high as 6.5 in 1972, has fallen to 2.7. While it is true that no single organization can take credit for this amazing turnaround, BRAC can nevertheless take great pride in the role that it has played in support of governmental efforts to bringing about these successes. From immunizing children to popularizing the use of oral rehydration therapy, from providing essential healthcare through a cadre of 80,000 barefoot health volunteers to providing safe places for mothers to give birth, from curing Tuberculosis to improving sanitation, BRAC’s work in public health has contributed to each of our country’s achievements in the health sector.

In the last 40 years, Bangladesh has gone from having a literacy rate of just 25% to over 65%. We are also one of the first countries in the developing world to have achieved gender parity in primary school completion, the second of the Millennium Development Goals. In the education sector, as in health, BRAC’s role in Bangladesh’s progress is significant. To date, over 5 million children, more than 60% of them girls, have graduated from BRAC primary schools and an overwhelming majority have gone into the public school system, performing, on average, better than their mainstream peers. BRAC today operates the largest secular non-formal education system in the world, with 30,000 primary and 15,000 pre-primary schools. In addition, BRAC University, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2011 and will hold its 7th convocation next week, is fast building a reputation as a centre of excellence for higher education and research in the country.

At the time of our independence, Bangladesh’s total labour force, formal and informal sectors combined, stood at 22 million. Four decades on, although our population has doubled, total labour force has increased by more than 3 times. A large portion of this increase can be attributed to the increased participation of women in the paid labour market. Once again, BRAC can take immense pride in the work it has done in facilitating employment generation for millions of the poor, through providing access to credit, access to training and inputs, and access to markets. In our efforts to create jobs for the poor, BRAC has pioneered several industries in Bangladesh and provided the base for private sector investment. These industries include, among others, handicrafts, poultry, dairy and seeds.

At BRAC, we have never shied away from doing business whenever we have seen prospects for job creation and improving access and opportunities for the poor and disadvantaged. Our social enterprises and investments have created thousands of jobs and provided market linkages for hundreds of thousands of rural entrepreneurs. Surpluses earned from these social enterprises and investments have also reduced BRAC’s dependence on donor funding. Today, donor funding accounts for less than 30 percent of BRAC’s annual budget of over USD 1 billion.
In 2002, exactly ten years ago, BRAC went international with the start of operations in Afghanistan. Then, as in Bangladesh in 1972, we found a country ravaged by war and struggling to cope with the many challenges of nation building. Also, as in Bangladesh in 1972, we saw millions of refugees returning to the country after the fall of the Taliban regime. We realized that our experience of working in similar circumstances and conditions made BRAC uniquely positioned to lend a hand. Our early successes in Afghanistan gave us the confidence to start programmes in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Asian Tsunami, and then in Uganda and Tanzania from 2006. Today, BRAC operates in 9 countries in South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, adapting and replicating our models in education, health, microfinance and agricultural development. Although challenges remain, we are promise bound to do everything necessary to contribute to the development of the countries in which we operate.

Though our achievements are many, the challenges that we must now face are numerous and increasingly complex. It is therefore important that we identify priorities for the decades ahead. While it is true that Bangladesh has shown a magnificent capacity to overcome adversity, we will continue to face new sets of challenges arising out of overpopulation, urbanization and climate change. In Bangladesh and in the other countries in which we work, the challenges of the future will require new and innovative solutions. I believe that in order to meet these challenges of the future, we have to tap the tremendous potential of the younger generation. BRAC is in the process of developing a comprehensive strategy to help the vibrant, innovative and entrepreneurial younger generation of today to realize their potential, and be the agents of change within their communities.

Unfortunately, public education systems in most developing countries are unfit and unsuited to prepare our youth for the 21st century knowledge society that we must aspire to. Outdated approaches to teaching must give way to new techniques that teach our children not to memorize texts, but to think critically and solve problems creatively. We must give greater thought, and direct greater resources towards early childhood development, and social and emotional learning. We must also deploy technology to provide the highest quality of education to the remotest parts of the world. I am happy to report that BRAC has started to work on all of these fronts.

Despite the progress made in the health sector, a mother is still 30 times more likely to die at childbirth in Bangladesh than in Norway. The quality of healthcare professionals remain poor and the state of health infrastructure outside our main cities is deplorable. We must, therefore, invest heavily in human resources and infrastructure to ensure access to affordable, quality healthcare for our citizens. In addition to doctors, we need to train and deploy thousands of nurses and mid-wives to serve our people better.

I strongly believe that gender equality remains the greatest unfinished agenda not only of my life’s work but of our time. Although we have worked for the last 40 years to try to ensure that all citizens can live with dignity and respect and enjoy equal rights as human beings, I am sorry to say that patriarchy remains entrenched in our social and religious practices. Even today, women work more for less pay than men and are systematically excluded from certain professions and roles. The majority of girls in Bangladesh get married in their teens, and over a third of them become victims of domestic violence. I consider the subjugation of half of the world’s population to be the greatest injustice in the history of humankind. In order to right this wrong, we must fight patriarchy in all of its manifestations, and I hope that BRAC and all of us who are associated with it will continue to be at the forefront of this fight.

Over the course of my work, it has become increasingly clear to me that communities and nations develop only when everyone does their part. Particularly in a poor country like ours, we cannot always wait for the government to provide all the essential services, or for the private sector to create all the jobs. At the same time, development can never be achieved by the citizen sector alone in the absence of good governance and a robust private sector. Real, sustainable development is achieved only when the public, private and citizen sectors collaborate together and work in cohort. That is why we at BRAC have partnered with the government, other development organisations and the private sector on wide-ranging issues from immunization and Tuberculosis control to teachers’ training and human rights advocacy. Our experience in these speaks volumes about what can be achieved when such collaborations do take place. I hope that we will continue to make necessary linkages and work together with the public and private sectors in Bangladesh and beyond to improve opportunities for our peoples.

In these twilight years of my life, I feel a sense of comfort and satisfaction in knowing that we have an able and competent leadership team at BRAC.  I am confident that this team will ensure BRAC achieves even greater success and impact when I call time on providing leadership to this organization that I have built. To them, I would like to say: BRAC should always pride itself in being a trailblazing organisation, so don’t ever slow down, don’t ever stop innovating, and most importantly, don’t ever lose sight of the mission to extend a hand to those who need it most.

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Sir Fazle Hasan Abed is the founder and chairperson of BRAC.