CameroonLoi n°2023/009 du 25 juillet 2023 portant charte de protection des enfants en ligne au Cameroun
Loi n°2023/009 du 25 juillet 2023
An age-appropriate design code rule binding private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Content labelling, Disclosure, Reporting
What it requires
- On the competent authorities' request, suspend access to the internet, to your content, or to your network for a consumer who published content harming a child's dignity and integrity (internet access providers, content providers, information-system operators, and social-network promoters, Article 14).
- On the competent authorities' request, stop indexing content that harms a child's dignity and integrity (search-engine providers, Article 15).
- Report to the competent authorities all acts constituting child pornography, and suspend the sites identified as harming a child's dignity and integrity (access providers, content and search-engine providers, social-network promoters, information-system operators, and cybercafe managers, Article 16).
- Make available to users guides to good practice in cyberspace, mechanisms for reporting content or behavior harming children, and parental-control tools (internet access providers, Articles 20 and 21).
- Describe the nature of the content or services offered and the age groups they are intended for (content and online-service providers, Article 23).
- Keep children out of online gambling and betting with a visible text barring them, an honor declaration of age with identification data, and online payment (gambling and betting promoters, Article 36).
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Which authorities count as the competent authorities whose request obliges internet access providers, content providers, information-system operators and social-network promoters to suspend access under Article 14 of Loi n°2023/009?
- Does the Article 23 duty to describe the age groups a content or online service is intended for apply to a general-audience service, and does it require any age check?
- Must an online gambling or betting promoter use all three means listed in Article 36 (a visible text barring children, an honor declaration of age with identification data, and online payment), or does any one of them suffice?
What this law does
Cameroon's charter for the protection of children online is Loi n°2023/009 of . The charter applies to all activities involving children in cyberspace and defines a child as any person under 18 (Articles 2 and 3).
The private sector shares with the public authorities the task of making the national cyberspace safer for children, and is to take steps when offering services to reduce the availability of, and access to, content harming a child's dignity and integrity (Articles 11 and 12).
On the competent authorities' request, internet access providers, content providers, information-system operators, and social-network promoters must suspend access to the internet, to their content, or to their network for a consumer who published content harming a child's dignity and integrity, and search-engine providers must stop indexing such content (Articles 14 and 15).
Internet access providers, content and search-engine providers, social-network promoters, information-system operators, and cybercafe managers must also report to the competent authorities all acts constituting child pornography and suspend the sites identified as harming a child's dignity and integrity (Article 16).
Internet access providers must make available guides to good practice in cyberspace, reporting mechanisms, and parental-control tools, and content and online-service providers must describe the nature of their content or services and the age groups they are intended for (Articles 20, 21, and 23).
Online gambling and betting promoters who do not keep children out, by a visible text barring them, an honor declaration of age with identification data, and online payment, face one to three years' imprisonment, a fine of 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 FCFA, or both (Article 36).
When a provider breaches its duties, the body regulating information and communication technologies serves formal notice to comply within 15 days, and if the notice is ignored it imposes a penalty of 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 FCFA (Articles 28 and 29).
Criminal sanctions begin at Article 33, with a fine of 25,000,000 to 250,000,000 FCFA for an internet access provider that knows of content harming a child's dignity and integrity and does not report, block, or remove it, and the court may add professional prohibitions and temporary closure of the establishment on a repeat offence.
The law names no day of entry into force: its article 49 orders it registered and published under the urgent procedure and inserted in the Journal Officiel in French and English, and its article 48 leaves the detailed rules of application to separate texts.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app serves under-18s or operates a social platform.
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