Perfume’s dark secret

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The global perfume industry is worth billions. Some luxury brands sell for hundreds of dollars a bottle. But BBC Eye Investigations has discovered that, when the sun goes down in Egypt, there is a hidden human cost to this industry. In the summer of 2023, the BBC visited four different locations in Egypt’s main jasmine-growing area, Al Gharbia, and found children - some as young as five - working at night to pick the jasmine that was supplied to some of the world’s leading perfume brands through factories in Egypt. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery tells the BBC what it’s uncovered ‘may constitute the worst form of child labour’. We hear the story of one family who say they have no choice but to take their children into the jasmine fields to work, in order to earn enough money to live.

Reporter: Natasha Cox Producers: Ahmed El Shamy and Louise Hidalgo Editors: Rebecca Henschke and Rosie Garthwaite Sound engineer: Neil Churchill + James Beard

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's three o'clock in the
0:10.0	three o'clock in the game.
0:10.0	It's three o'clock in the morning,
0:11.0	outside the sky is pitch black.
0:13.4	Ten-year-old Basmala begs her mother to let her sleep.
0:19.9	But Heba continues to shake her daughter awake.
0:24.0	Heba needs to get her children up.
0:26.0	They're late.
0:28.0	They need to get out into the fields to pick Jasmine. This small delicate white flower blooms at night. It must be collected when its scent
0:42.3	is at its strongest before the sun rises and the heat
0:45.8	withers it.
0:49.2	We're in the El Garbaia region in Egypt to uncover the hidden side of a trade that fees one of the
0:54.9	richest most exclusive industries in the world. The wonderful fragrance about
1:00.1	style and fashion, seasonless yet it's completely intoxicating.
1:07.0	I'm Natasha Cox, and you're listening to the documentary
1:10.4	from the BBC World Service.
1:20.0	I can, we will, Edol, the new fragrance. Almost every night during the six months of the Jasmine season, Heather and her children
1:27.6	go out into the fields.
1:31.4	Tonight we're joining them.
1:36.0	There's her son, Anas, who's five,
1:38.0	and her daughters Mariam 15, Rauda 8, and Vassmala.
1:44.0	We're walking from their house along a narrow path that takes you to the fields.
	...

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