Children have picked ingredients used by suppliers to two major beauty companies, the BBC can reveal.

Heba – who lives in a village in the district of Gharbia, the heart of Egypt’s jasmine region – wakes her family at 03:00 to begin picking the flowers before the sun’s heat damages them.

Heba’s 10-year-old daughter Basmalla has also been diagnosed with a severe eye allergy. At a medical consultation we attended with her, the doctor told her that her vision will be affected if she continues jasmine picking without treating the inflammation.

We witnessed that, at four different locations, a significant number of pickers working on smallholder farms – which supply the main factories – were children under the age of 15. Multiple sources also told us that there were children working on farms directly owned by the Machalico factory, so we went undercover to film there and found pickers who told us their ages ranged from 12 to 14.

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