UAE issues federal decree-law on child digital safety

 

The decree-law aims to protect children from harmful digital content and practices that may negatively affect their physical, psychological, and moral health. It also aims to develop digital awareness among children and their caregivers regarding digital rights and responsibilities, thereby promoting a culture of positive and conscious use of modern technologies.

 

 

The decree-law establishes a comprehensive framework for digital safety, encompassing various types of digital platforms. This framework keeps pace with the rapid development in the digital space, including websites, search engines, smart applications, messaging apps, online gaming platforms, social media platforms, live streaming platforms, podcast platforms, streaming services, online video-on-demand platforms, and e-commerce platforms.

 

 

The decree-law establishes the "Child Digital Safety Council," chaired by the Minister of Family Affairs and overseen by the Council for Education, Human Development, and Community Development. This council serves as an advisory and coordinating body to achieve integration and coordination among federal and local entities and the private sector regarding efforts to ensure children's digital safety. The decree-law also defines the Council's responsibilities, which include proposing policies, legislation, and strategies to ensure the highest levels of digital security for children, and submitting them to the Cabinet for approval after the approval of the Education, Human Development, and Community Council. The Council is also responsible for proposing a comprehensive awareness system and conducting studies to monitor emerging digital risks in light of rapid technological advancements.

 

Furthermore, the Council's responsibilities include proposing general standards for privacy and digital security, as well as general controls and guidelines for the safe use of digital platforms. It also monitors and evaluates the effectiveness of implemented policies and strategies, measures their impact, and submits findings and recommendations for improvement.

 

 

The decree-law prohibits digital platforms from collecting, processing, publishing, or sharing the personal data of children under the age of 13, except under specific conditions. The most important of these conditions is obtaining explicit and documented parental consent from the child's guardian, and prohibiting the exploitation of their data for commercial purposes, for targeted online advertising, or for tracking their personal account activity.

 

 

The decree-law also regulates the mechanism for reporting harmful content to children, ensuring swift action in cases of digital abuse or exploitation of children. It defines the responsibilities of relevant authorities in conducting periodic monitoring of content on digital platforms and reporting to security authorities any child pornography, harmful content, or digital violations that children may be exposed to and that constitute criminal offenses.

 

 

The decree-law outlines a set of obligations for digital platforms to ensure the protection of children from harmful content in the digital environment. Key among these obligations are providing effective age verification mechanisms, tools for enforcing age restrictions on the use of digital platforms, activating blocking, filtering, and age-rating tools for content, regulating targeted online advertising, and providing parental control tools such as setting time limits for children's daily use of platforms.

 

 

Digital platforms are obligated to periodically disclose their user and content policies, raise awareness of the risks associated with excessive or uncontrolled use of digital platforms, and provide tools for the immediate reporting of pornographic material, harmful content, or behaviours harmful to children.

 

 

A system for classifying digital platforms, based on an assessment of their risks and impact on children, will be issued by decree-law, through a Cabinet decision following approval by the Education, Human Development, and Community Development Council. This system will detail the obligations and enhanced child protection measures, as well as their implementation, ensuring a balance between maximising child protection and allowing flexibility in selecting the most appropriate technologies for digital platforms.

 

This system will also define the controls and restrictions related to the use of these platforms by different age groups of children.

 

The decree-law specifies a set of obligations on Internet Service Providers, the most important of which is activating content filtering systems on networks to promote compliance with policies to ban harmful content for children, and taking the necessary measures to ensure safe and controlled use if the beneficiary of Internet services or electronic devices is a child, including obligating the person responsible for the child’s care to sign the terms of service, including those that require linking the service to parental control tools.

 

 

The decree-law also outlines the obligations of child caregivers, most importantly monitoring the child's digital activities, using parental control tools to ensure safe use and protection from harmful content, refraining from creating accounts for children on digital platforms that are not age-appropriate, avoiding the negative exploitation of children on digital platforms or in the virtual world in a way that threatens their privacy, psychological and social well-being, or makes them vulnerable to bullying, and educating children about the culture of safe and responsible technology use.