children, some as young as five years old, are working in dangerous conditions throughout the night and pickers are earning as little as a dollar a day. while huge profits are made by giants in the business. this investigation reveals who the real masters of the perfume industry are. there is this hidden layer. they are the ones controlling everything that goes into the fragrance. and how they are falling short of the human rights commitments that they're promoting publicly. they are not actually doing things that they promised to do. as we expose for the first time the use of child labour in the supply chains of some of the world's most luxurious fragrances. mohamed grew up in the village of shubra beloula in al—gharbia, the centre of the jasmine trade in egypt. around 720 acres of land across the region are planted with these precious flowers. mohamed used to work in the jasmine industry, but now he organises tours to educate people about it. mirna el—helbawi, a human rights activist and beauty influencer, hasjoined mohamed's tour to look into where and how her perfume is made. wow. ourjasmine is, uh, is a very special crop. my name is hussein fakhry and i'm owner/president of fakhry & co. jasmine is a lady of the night, so she only has a story to tell you at night. so you want to catch that fragrance. when the sun goes down in this region, there is a secret world of the perfume industry that you don't see. mirna wants to meet the people that pick herjasmine. and is heading to fields situated outside of shubra beloula. egyptian jasmine blooms just after sunset. in order to catch the fragrance, the flower needs to be picked before it withers in the sun's heat. heba's family is one of thousands of pickers that have to start work in the middle of the night. and fight through mosquitoes and pesticides as they gather as much jasmine as possible. like the majority ofjasmine pickers in this region, heba and her children work throughout the harvest season from june to november. the temperature can reach up to a0 degrees celsius. when the sun comes up, the pickers deliver their flowers to a collection point, of which there are hundreds. once the flowers have been weighed, they are transported to factories operating in the region. these are the main three: the factories extract jasmine oil from the flowers to sell to fragrance houses around the world. heba, like most of the jasmine pickers, is what's known as an independent picker and works on a smallholder farm. out of what she earns she has to pay a third to the owner of the land that she picks flowers on. heba alone picked under a kilo of flowers overnight. but with the help of her children picking, she managed to deliver 1.5 kilos ofjasmine flowers to the collection point, leaving the family with roughly $1.50 for today's work. inflation in egypt is at an all—time high. the egyptian pound has depreciated by more than 50% since 2022. relatively, independent pickers are making less forjasmine than they have ever done before and are living below the poverty line. at the start of every season, the price for a kilo ofjasmine flowers is set by the factory owners. the low price is the reason why heba has to take her children to work. but how many other families are forced to do the same? during the summer of 2023, the bbc filmed across this region. we spoke to many residents and witnessed that at four different locations a significant number of jasmine pickers were children under the age of 15 working on smallholderfarms. and we can reveal that most of the flowers from these locations are sent, via collection points, to the main factories: multiple sources have also told us that there are children working on farms directly owned by one of the factories — machalico. but we had no way of accessing them. unless we went undercover. in egypt, it is illegal for children under the age of 15 to work between the hours of 7:00pm to 7:00am. but in a multibillion—dollar industry who is really to blame? back in cairo, mirna is trying to find out more about her favourite bottle of perfume. so, i have this bottle of perfume. it's one of my top favourites. lancome idole intense. it has the scent of the fields of al—gharbia because it has egyptian jasmine in. that's why i love it so much. it opens up with notes of mandarin orange, bitter orange, egyptian jasmine. this is the perfumer who made this perfume. currently serving at givaudan. 0h, at givaudan. the perfume supply chain goes far beyond the three main factories in egypt. the factories sell their jasmine oil to international fragrance houses, where perfumes are created. givaudan, based in switzerland, is one of the largest of four major fragrance houses, valued at $38 billion. and they've been sourcing theirjasmine oil from a fakhry & co for years. but where does givaudan fit in the wider industry? we spent months speaking to multiple sources and industry insiders from the factories to the fragrance houses. most were too afraid to go on the record. we arranged meetings with people who didn't show up and received message after message explaining that no—one felt able to speak freely. but one established perfumer agreed to meet with us. christophe laudamiel spent years working inside one of the fragrance houses, where he created polo blue for ralph lauren, and amber absolute for tom ford. he now works independently. in the perfume industry, there is this hidden layer, very little known from the public, which we can call the masters of the perfume industry. as consumers, we are able to choose from thousands of perfumes that are sold by world famous brands. but these perfume brands are owned by a handful of conglomerates. a hidden layer considered to be the masters of the industry. our investigation reveals the use of egyptian jasmine in some of the perfumes owned by two of the masters, l'0real and estee lauder, and specifically their brands lancome and aerin beauty. these companies, they decide how or what is going to go in the bottles. they decide about the packaging and they impose a very strict budget to create the fragrance. that budget, it trickles down. really, that shackle, if you wish, trickles down, all the way down to the harvesters. a more complete picture of the masters�* supply chain emerges. when l'0real and estee lauder decide they want to put a bottle of perfume on the market, they send a brief and a budget to the fragrance houses, like givaudan and firmenich, to create the perfume, and jasmine is sourced from the factories. these hidden masters that people don't know much about, they sign contracts with the brands and with the celebrities. so in fact, the brands don't know what is inside the bottles. those masters organise all this for them. but the masters interest is to have the cheapest oil possible to put in the fragrance bottle and to sell it as expensive as possible on the market. the fragrance that is in that bottle costs to the masters about, on average, $1. in that $1, you have the salary of the perfumers, the salary of the harvesters, the distillery, the logistics to get all these ingredients to the perfume factory to make the fragrance. if the liquid inside our perfume bottles costs, on average, $1, what are we really paying for? industry experts have given us a breakdown of the estimated costs that go into a $100 bottle of perfume. this further indicates that the jasmine pickers receive a very small fraction of what we consumers spend. the fragrance industry is booming, with more people buying perfume than ever before. bestjasmine perfumes. i have over 400 bottles of perfume. yes, it's a lot - of fragrance but... 3000 new fragrances were launched in 2022 alone, with many brands including egyptian jasmine in some of their bestselling perfumes, and are sold on the market with ever—rising price tags. while it's boom time for the industry, the pickers are not seeing any of these profits, and are struggling despite promises that have been made by both the masters and the fragrance houses. in their promotional material, they paint a picture of ethical sourcing practices. our products and day—to—day actions contribute to the health and well—being of people and our planet. at l'0real group, we create the beauty, beauty that cares. our business wouldn't exist without the communities where we source and in which we operate. we want to ensure they benefit from working with us. one of the largest fragrance houses, givaudan, says on its website: "we do not practice or tolerate any form "of child exploitation and do not provide employment "to children." they've taken photos from al—gharbia to promote their commitments in protecting jasmine pickers and their families. and they say in one of their glossy web pages: "we work directly with local smallholder farmers. "our work also contributes to more stable incomes to help "improve the lives of these communities." but the promotional material that exists across the industry doesn't match with what we've seen in the jasmine fields in egypt. we put all of our findings to the masters of the perfume industry. we asked the three main factories for a comment and they said: hello. if you're not impressed with whatjune has brought us so far weather wise, i suspect this weekend will do very little to change your view. further showers in the forecast, albeit with some spells of sunshine in between. a rather cool feel for the time of year. the earlier satellite picture from friday shows clumps of shower cloud circulating around the centre of an area of low pressure. and this will be our weather maker throughout the weekend with bands of showers or longer spells of rain, albeit with some spells of sunshine in between. you can see we start saturday morning with some slices of sunshine, but some showers from the word go. some of those are going to be heavy, perhaps thundery. the showers could show up just about anywhere. some brisk winds across both the north and the south of the uk. in fact, through the english channel, we could see gusts of a0 miles per hour or more, at least where it's windy. the showers will move through pretty quickly with light winds. parts of northern ireland, southern scotland, northern england will see slow moving showers and those temperatures at best between 13 and 17 degrees. so our low still with us through saturday night. and this little weather system here will bring a clump of heavy and persistent rain southwards across scotland, getting down into parts of northern ireland's and perhaps the far north of england by the start of sunday morning. we'll start sunday with temperatures around eight to 11 degrees. a sunshine and showers story again for most of us on sunday. but with this band of more persistent rain sinking its way down across northern ireland, affecting southwest scotland into the north of england, those showers where they do crop up across southern and eastern parts of england particularly could again be heavy and thundery. 1a degrees for stornoway, maybe 19 degrees for hull and for london. so perhaps just a little bit warmer. into monday sunshine and showers once again, although with quite a lot of cloud, i suspect across northern and western parts. 21 degrees possible across the south—east corner. and as we look further ahead, well, there are some signs that at least for a while, things might try to settle down with this ridge of high pressure just trying to topple its way in, but signs are it may not last, it may not hold on for all that long with areas of wet weather returning by the end of the week and while temperatures may climb a little, there's certainly no heat wave on the way. live from washington, this is a bbc news special report. seven of the world's wealthies democracies have gathered in italy for this year's annual g7 summit. the 3—day meeting has so far featured talks on climate change and the middle east, plus provided billions of dollars in aid and a historic security dealfor ukraine. we have signed the strongest agreement in ukraine and the us since our independence. hello, i'm carl nasman. welcome to our special report on the g7 gathering in apulia, italy. at this year's summit the group of seven leaders have plenty on the agenda: the conflict in the middle east, migration, economic relations with china, and artificial intelligence, in talks led by pope francis. but let's start with the war in ukraine.

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