GabonOrdonnance n°0011/PR/2026, protection des mineurs sur les réseaux sociaux
Ordonnance n°0011/PR/2026 art. 14, 16-24 et 53 (protection des mineurs), du 26 février 2026 portant réglementation de l'usage des réseaux sociaux
archived copy
Read from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2026. Publisher's page: https://journal-officiel.ga/22404-0011-pr-2026-/In force since .
A social media and minors rule binding private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- periodic
- Who audits it
- Regulator, Independent third party
- Where the report goes
- Published summary
What it requires
- Applies to editors of social networks, online communication services and digital platforms that allow account or profile creation, except online encyclopedias, educational, cultural or scientific directories, free and open-source software platforms, and supervised school content with parental consent.
- Do not let a user under 16 create an account or profile on a covered service.no control in the NIST Privacy Framework
- Within twelve months of the ordinance's publication, deploy an effective technical mechanism that verifies a user's age at registration; a user's own false declaration of age does not relieve you of this duty of reasonable vigilance.no control in the NIST Privacy Framework
- Block or suspend posting, sharing and social-interaction features on an account identified as belonging to a user under 16, unless parental consent is formally registered.no control in the NIST Privacy Framework
- For accounts identified as minors, disable by default any feature that lets an unidentified person contact them directly, and filter AI-generated violent, sexual or psychologically harmful content out of algorithmic recommendations.no control in the NIST Privacy Framework
- Keep pornographic content from users under 18, using an age-verification system that meets the minimum requirements of the technical référentiel (reference standard) the Haute Autorité de la Communication publishes.no control in the NIST Privacy Framework
- Report quarterly on the number of minor accounts detected, blocked or removed and the verification methods used.NIST Privacy FrameworkGV.PO-P5
- Acknowledge a cyberbullying report, or a report of harmful content involving a minor, within twenty-four hours, and decide on it and notify the user within seventy-two hours.no control in the NIST Privacy Framework
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST Privacy Framework
- GV.PO-P5Legal, regulatory, and contractual requirements regarding privacy are understood and managed.
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-DET-004AI System Observability
- AIR-DET-021Agent Decision Audit and Explainability
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework, and in the NIST Privacy Framework, line by line beside each duty above. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
The ordinance's general penalty provisions punish obstructing the Haute Autorité de la Communication's action with up to one year's imprisonment and a fine of 2,000,000 to 20,000,000 FCFA, and a host's or editor's failure to fight illicit content with up to one year and a fine of 5,000,000 to 50,000,000 FCFA; neither penalty is scoped specifically to a failure of the age-verification duty, so the ordinance states no fixed penalty amount for that duty alone.
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Haute Autorité de la Communication (HAC); technical audits also confided to the Autorité de Régulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) or another independent body
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does the technical "référentiel" ("reference standard") that article 20 requires the Haute Autorité de la Communication to publish, in the words "un référentiel déterminant les exigences techniques minimales applicables aux systèmes de vérification de l'âge" ("a reference standard setting the minimum technical requirements applicable to age-verification systems"), also govern the age check for users under 16 that articles 22 and 53 require, or only the check for pornographic content that the preceding provision (article 19) addresses?
What it reaches
Age threshold
16
Covered services
Online communication services, social networks, and digital platforms allowing account or profile creation; a lower threshold of 18 applies separately to pornographic content
How the hook was established
express
What makes it apply
Place of effect
Obligation class
Age verification, Design code, Reporting
Verification methods
Self declaration, Parental consent
What it makes you log
Who may demand the log
Regulator
What the log must hold
Age assurance result, Consent or opt-out state
Logging duty
Article 22 requires every editor to report quarterly to the competent authority the number of minor accounts detected, blocked or removed and the verification methods used, which cannot be produced without records of the age checks, and ties the posting restriction to parental consent that is formally registered. The text sets no retention period or deletion rule for the age data. Article 53 also requires an editor to preserve, and give the regulator within eight days, the origin metadata of AI-generated content under investigation; that duty concerns content, not age checks.
- Kind
- Explicit
- As of
- Provision
- Ordonnance n°0011/PR/2026, art. 22
- Trigger
- age_assurance
- consent_or_optout
What this law does
Ordonnance n°0011/PR/2026 sets Gabon's digital age of majority at sixteen and prohibits creating an account or profile on any online communication service, social network, or digital platform for a minor under that age, with a narrow carve-out for online encyclopedias, educational, cultural, or scientific directories, free and open-source software development and sharing platforms, and pedagogical content consulted at school with a teacher's supervision and the parent's express consent.
The person holding parental authority is liable for what a minor under sixteen does on a social network or platform in their charge, and that person may have data about the minor erased.
Pornographic content is barred to a minor under eighteen, and the Haute Autorité de la Communication publishes and enforces a technical référentiel setting the minimum requirements an age-verification system must meet, entrusting technical audits of those systems to itself or to the Autorité de Régulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) or another independent body with proven expertise.
Within twelve months of the ordinance's publication, every social-network or digital-platform editor must deploy an effective technical mechanism to verify a user's age at registration.
The editor must block or suspend posting, sharing, and social-interaction features for an account identified as belonging to a user under sixteen unless parental consent is formally registered, disable by default any feature letting an unidentified person contact a minor's account directly, filter out algorithmic recommendation of AI-generated violent, sexual, or psychologically harmful content to accounts identified as minors, and report quarterly on the number of minor accounts detected, blocked, or removed and the verification methods used.
A user's own false declaration of age does not relieve the platform of this duty of reasonable vigilance. An editor must also acknowledge a cyberbullying report or a report of harmful content involving a minor within twenty-four hours and decide and notify the user within seventy-two hours.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app operates a social platform.
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