Egypt produces about half of the world’s supply of jasmine, a major ingredient for the perfume industry. But a recent investigation by the BBC revealed that behind the enticing fragrance, jasmine pickers in Egypt often include children who work grueling long hours at night to pick the delicate flowers. And despite industry pledges to keep child labor out of their supply chain, little is being done to stop it.

The squeeze for more profits leads directly to child labor

Jasmine flowers are picked by hand at night due to their delicate and fragile qualities. Pickers in Egypt are paid by weight with a chunk of whatever they earn from picking going to the landowner. The handful of companies that own most of the luxury brands of perfume have been squeezing budgets hard, leading to very low pay for the pickers. To have any hope of earning enough to feed their families, pickers are forced to bring their children to work to pick with them. Undercover footage of Egyptian jasmine fields during picking season last year revealed the prevalence of the practice.

The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata, said:

“On paper, they [the industry] are promising so many good things, like supply chain transparency and the fight against child labor, looking at this footage, they are not actually doing things that they promised to do.”

Pickers often live below the poverty line and rely on the income from gathering jasmine flowers. One mother filmed picking with her children, was only able to gather 1.5kg of jasmine flowers in a night. After paying a third of their earnings to the landowner, the family was left with roughly US $1.50. With inflation at an all-time high in Egypt, that paltry amount buys even less than ever before. This makes earning enough to feed their families a herculean task for many.

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