BY: Abdikafi M. Iftin
There was a time in the United States when child labour was not considered an unusual feature of society. As industry expanded, particularly in the period following the Civil War, children, often as young as ten and sometimes even younger were employed in a wide range of occupations. They worked not only in factories, but also in retail stores, on the streets, on farms, and in home-based industries. The history of American child labour shows how deeply economic necessity, family expectations and social attitudes could shape the way society viewed working children.
This article looks at how that attitude eventually changed, how child labour came to be restricted, and what that history might tell us when we look at the children who stand on the streets of Mogadishu today, selling small goods and performing work that can consume much of their childhood.
Over the past four years, Mogadishu has experienced a visible acceleration in construction. Buildings rising beyond “G+10” have become increasingly common, and almost every morning seems to bring news of another construction project on a road that one regularly travelled the day before. A capital city emerging from the remnants of three decades of state collapse is visibly changing. Investment is appearing on commercial streets, new buildings are rising, and the city is attempting to rebuild itself.
These developments may not yet represent everything a capital city needs in order to fully recover, but they are nevertheless visible signs of change signs capable of giving many Somalis a sense of optimism. Yet the beauty of this changing urban landscape is not what compelled me to write this article.
What caught my attention was something much smaller than a new building, but much larger in its implications: the children working on the streets of Mogadishu.
Among them are girls and boys who appear not yet to have reached the age of ten. Let us look back at the United States, and particularly at New York City, during an era when child labour was a familiar part of urban life. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its historical account of child labour, describes a period when children worked in factories, retail stores, on streets, farms and in home-based industries. Following the Industrial Revolution and continuing into the early twentieth century, working children were found in a remarkable variety of occupations.
One story published in Cosmopolitan in 1906 described an elderly Native American chieftain who was taken on a tour of New York City. He saw the skyscrapers reaching into the sky, bridges connecting parts of the city, places of entertainment, crowded neighbourhoods and banks. After the tour, he was asked what had surprised him most. His answer was only three words: “Little children working.” The story is striking because the things surrounding him represented the modernity and wealth of New York, yet what remained most memorable to him was the sight of children working.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, working children were not an unusual sight in American cities. The historical record shows that children had long been considered economically productive members of the household. In eighteenth-century rural America, for example, children could be viewed by parents as future contributors to family labour and security. Some children began helping with farm work and household tasks at very young ages.
As industrialisation expanded, the opportunities for employing children expanded as well.
Children worked in textile mills, glass factories, mines, agriculture, street trades, retail businesses and home workshops. Newspaper selling was one of the most visible forms of street work. In many families struggling financially, children were viewed not simply as dependants but also as potential contributors to household income.
By 1900, the scale was substantial. Historical research cited by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that more than one in five children were employed, while between 1890 and 1910 at least 18 percent of children aged ten to fifteen were working.
The transformation did not happen overnight.
Reformers, journalists, activists and eventually lawmakers challenged the idea that a child’s value should be measured primarily by his or her economic contribution. The reform movement developed over decades, and the legal and social struggle against child labour was contested by employers, parents and parts of the legal system.
Eventually, however, the social understanding of childhood changed. The child came to be viewed increasingly as more than a source of labour. One of the most disturbing aspects of the history of child labour is the way in which economic value could become attached to a child’s existence. Parents often believed they had the right to control the earnings of their children. In that social environment, a child who worked could be understood as contributing directly to the family’s economic survival. But some people challenged this way of thinking.
The argument was simple: a child should not be reduced to an economic asset.
A particularly striking example appears in Schendel v. Bradford, an Ohio case from 1922 involving the death of a six-year-old child. A dissenting judge objected to calculating the value of the child’s life primarily in financial terms. The concern was that doing so risked turning the child into a business commodity and reducing the loss of a human life to a calculation of dollars and cents.
The importance of this argument goes beyond the particular case. It represents a broader transformation in the social understanding of childhood: children have value that cannot be reduced to the money they earn or the economic contribution they make to their families. That question remains relevant today. Now return to Mogadishu.
As the months of 2026 pass, the streets of the capital continue to reveal children selling small items to passing pedestrians and motorists. Some sell peanuts, raisins, chewing gum, socks and other small goods. Others perform services or carry items in search of small payments. For families struggling to meet their daily needs, the money earned by a child can become part of the household economy. This reality should not be reduced to a simple story about “bad parents.” Poverty changes the choices available to families. The Somali government, UNICEF and the International Labour Organization have acknowledged that economic hardship and the lack of decent employment opportunities for adults are among the reasons families send children to work. UNICEF and ILO have also emphasised that eliminating child labour requires not only laws but social protection, education and decent employment opportunities for adults.
This is an important distinction.
A parent who sends a child to sell goods on the street may not necessarily believe that childhood is unimportant. The parent may simply be responding to an immediate economic reality: food must be bought, rent must be paid, and the family must survive. But understanding the economic pressure does not mean ignoring the consequences for the child.
A child who spends long hours on the street is exposed to traffic, harassment, violence, exploitation and other risks. Street work can also interfere with education and with the ordinary experiences of childhood. Somalia’s own legal framework recognises that children require protection. The International Labour Organization’s Child Labour Observatory currently lists Somalia’s minimum age for admission to work as 15 and the minimum age for hazardous work as 18. Somalia’s Labour Code and other legislation also contain provisions concerning the employment of children. The problem, therefore, is not simply the absence of a legal principle. It is the distance between what the law says and what happens on the street. There is another element of this story that deserves attention. When one family sends a child to work and sees that the child returns home with money, another family facing similar economic difficulties may begin to see the same possibility.
A child who earns ten dollars in a day can become an example to another household struggling to survive. The result can be a form of informal competition.
One child is sent to sell peanuts. Another follows with chewing gum. Another sells raisins. Another walks between cars offering small goods to drivers and passengers. The street becomes a marketplace, but it also becomes a workplace for children. And there is something deeply troubling about seeing a seven-year-old still standing beside a road late at night, sometimes close to eleven o’clock, carrying peanuts or packets of gum while adults are returning home. At that hour, the question is no longer simply how much money the child has earned.
The question becomes: What is the child losing in exchange for that money?
Mogadishu is changing.
Its buildings are growing taller. Its roads are becoming busier. Businesses are opening. Investment is visible. A new urban economy is emerging. But development cannot be measured only by the height of buildings. A city also develops when its children become safer. It develops when a child who would otherwise spend the afternoon selling peanuts can spend that time in school. It develops when parents can earn enough to feed their families without depending on the labour of their young children. It develops when a seven-year-old is known by society primarily as a student, a son or daughter, a friend, a football player, a reader, an artist—or simply a child—not as a source of daily income. This is where the historical comparison with the United States becomes meaningful.
America did not eliminate child labour simply because society suddenly became wealthier. The transformation involved changing ideas about childhood, reforming laws, expanding education, improving economic conditions and challenging the assumption that children existed primarily to increase household productivity. Somalia faces a different history, different institutions and different economic circumstances. The comparison should therefore not be treated as a claim that Mogadishu is literally experiencing the same historical period as nineteenth- or early twentieth-century America.
Rather, the comparison raises a question.
Can a rapidly developing capital city build modern towers while leaving some of its youngest citizens working on the streets?
The answer cannot simply be to remove children from the streets and leave their families without alternatives. If poverty is one of the forces pushing children into work, then child-labour policy must also address the poverty that makes their labour economically necessary. That means stronger enforcement of child-protection and labour laws, but also support for vulnerable families, access to quality education, social protection, and decent employment opportunities for adults. Somalia’s Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, together with ILO and UNICEF, has already recognised the need for stronger efforts to eliminate child labour. The challenge is turning that recognition into sustained action.
Local organisations are also working on child protection and the prevention of child labour. In Mogadishu, for example, the Global Initiative for Minorities and Children (GIMC) lists prevention of child labour, child-rights education, community awareness and support for vulnerable families among its areas of work. The issue therefore belongs not only to government. It belongs to parents, businesses, schools, civil society, religious leaders, journalists and ordinary citizens.
Even the customer has a role.
Every time an adult buys something from a very young child on the street, the transaction may provide immediate help to that child and family. But it may also unintentionally reinforce the economic system that keeps the child on the street. That contradiction deserves a serious public conversation. More than a century ago, an elderly Native American chieftain reportedly walked through New York and was astonished by something that the city’s residents had learned to see as ordinary: little children working. Today, many people in Mogadishu have also learned to see working children as part of the normal landscape of the city. Perhaps that is the most important part of this story.
The danger is not only that children are working. The danger is that we may become accustomed to seeing them work. A modern capital should not measure its progress only by how many floors its buildings have. It should also ask how many children have been able to leave the streets and enter classrooms.
Mogadishu is rebuilding.
The question is whether its children will rebuild with it—or whether they will be left behind, selling peanuts and packets of gum beneath the shadows of its new towers.
A city is not truly modern when its buildings are modern but its children are still carrying the economic burdens of adults.
REFERENCES
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — History of Child Labor in the United States, Part 1
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm
Edwin Markham, “The Child at the Loom,” Cosmopolitan, September 1906, pp. 80–87
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm
UNICEF Somalia — Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, ILO and UNICEF commit to ending child labour in Somalia
https://www.unicef.org/somalia/press-releases/ministry-labour-and-social-affairs-ilo-and-unicef-commit-ending-child-labour-somalia
ILO Child Labour Observatory — Somalia
https://webapps.ilo.org/clodashboard/section/2A
U.S. Department of Labor — Child Labor in Somalia
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/somalia
UNICEF Somalia — Education Sector Analysis
https://www.unicef.org/somalia/media/1201/file/Somalia-Educationsector-analysis-2012-16.pdf
Dr. Yasin Jabbe — The Untold Hustle of Mogadishu’s Children Street Vendor
https://drjabbe.wordpress.com/
Global Initiative for Minorities and Children (GIMC)
https://globalminority.org/
Schendel v. Bradford, 140 N.E. 155 (Ohio 1922)
https://doi.org/10.21916/mlr.2017.1