The Abu Dhabi Civil Family Court has handed down what is understood to be the first ruling of its kind in the UAE, ordering both parents of two young girls to ‘refrain entirely’ from publishing their photographs or personal data on social media, and to delete all existing content relating to the children that harms their best interests.
The judgment, issued 9 June in a public hearing and seen by Spear’s in redacted form, arises from a dispute between a father and his ex-wife, a high-profile influencer, both resident in the UAE. The couple divorced in Germany in July 2025 and share joint custody of their ten year-old and five year-old daughters.
The father, represented by Byron James, partner at Expatriate Law, asked the court to stop the mother ‘exploiting the minor children in her custody through digital platforms’ – including any commercial, promotional or advertising use – to remove or conceal their identities in publicly available content and to bar the creation of accounts or digital profiles in the children’s names without the consent of both parents or the court.
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A question of consent
The Abu Dhabi court found that both parents had ‘failed to adhere to proper conduct’ in raising the children (each having posted pictures of them online), and ordered each parent to refrain from any activity that could harm the girls, endanger their psychological wellbeing or ‘prejudice their future prospects’ – including the publication of photographs or personal data on social media.
Should either parent breach the order, the consequences ‘may extend to imprisonment or removal from joint custody’, the judgment warns.
Rather than resolving the case on the consent arguments advanced by the father, the court grounded its ruling in the UAE’s Child Rights Law (known as the Wadeema law) which protects children from all forms of exploitation and guarantees their right to privacy, alongside the principle in Abu Dhabi’s civil family regulations that the child’s best interests are the parents’ primary consideration after divorce.
The girls, the court said, are children ‘whose privacy, bodily integrity, reputation and safety must be protected’ and who must not appear in any content ‘contrary to the natural norms of preserving good morals’.
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James, who set out his case in a 25-page memorandum, brought the application on grounds including children’s privacy and their commercialisation.
In the UAE, photographing someone without their consent is a criminal offence which is where, in his analysis, children’s cases become difficult. ‘Can a child consent? No,’ he told Spear’s ahead of the judgment. ‘So if a child cannot consent, then on what basis are you taking a picture of them and putting it online?’
Children cannot give informed consent ‘because they aren’t able to comprehend the wide-reaching nature of publishing’ and where parents are separated, one cannot provide sufficient consent alone, James argued.
Beyond the Gulf
The implications may reach well beyond the divorcing couple. The UAE was among the first countries in the world to regulate paid social media content, introducing mandatory influencer licensing in 2017. Since February this year, under a new federal media law, anyone publishing promotional content online from within the UAE, paid or unpaid, requires a permit from the newly created National Media Authority. More than 1,800 advertiser permits had been issued as the registration deadline approached in January, according to the regulator.
James believes the ruling ‘changes everything’, he wrote in a LinkedIn post after the judgment. ‘Every influencer parent. Every “family vlog”. Every child whose face is content before they can spell their own name. The law is finally asking the question the child cannot: who gave you permission?’
The ruling lands amid a wave of legislative activity worldwide on ‘sharenting’ – parents publishing their children’s lives online – though few jurisdictions have gone as far in their sanctions.
European courts have ordered family members to delete children’s photographs before: a Dutch court did so in 2020, ruling that a grandmother who posted her grandchildren on Facebook without their parents’ consent had breached GDPR, which in its Dutch implementation requires a guardian’s permission to publish images of children under the age of 16. But the penalty in that instance was a €50-a-day fine.
France has moved furthest legislatively: having passed the world’s first child influencer law in 2020, it wrote children’s image rights into the Civil Code in 2024, allowing a family judge to bar one parent from posting images of a child without the other’s consent – and, where a child’s dignity is seriously harmed, to partially withdraw parental authority.
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American states have treated it instead as a question of child labour, with Illinois, California and Minnesota requiring parents to place a share of earnings from monetised content featuring their children in trust (Tennessee’s version takes effect in July 2026, and more than a dozen states have bills in progress). England meanwhile has no dedicated statute at all: a parent objecting to the other’s posting must seek a specific issue order through the courts.
For James, the deeper problem is one no legislature has yet resolved: ‘What happens if parents are in different countries? What happens if you take your child on holiday and you post pictures of your child whilst you’re in another country? What law regulates that?’ Ultimately, he says, ‘it comes down to a child rights question. Is it a breach of a child’s rights of privacy to have their images published online without their consent?’
‘I’ve had a lot of lawyers reach out to me about it from all over the world,’ he adds. ‘This isn’t just a UAE issue. It’s a global issue and I think it’s a global parenting problem.’
Spear’s is seeking comment from the lawyers representing the mother in the case, but has not managed to make contact with them. This article will be updated following any response to our enquiries.
