Lesotho

National jurisdiction · as of 2026-09-07

Lesotho has no adult-content age-verification law, social-media minor-access restriction, app-store age-verification requirement, or age-appropriate design code.

The Children's Protection and Welfare Act, 2011 (Act No. 7 of 2011) consolidates the law on the protection and welfare of children, defines a child as a person under 18, and bars any person, institution or organisation from publishing information that reveals or may reveal the identity of a child appearing before a Children's Court or a child witness under 18, and provides for an intermediary to assist a child witness testifying through electronic or other devices, but it addresses court and media reporting rather than a duty on an online service to verify a user's age or restrict a minor's access, and does not mention the internet or an online service at all.

The Communications Act, 2012 (Act No. 4 of 2012) directs the Lesotho Communications Authority to submit a proposed broadcasting code governing, among other things, content that is obscene, offensive or likely to incite violence, and separately makes it an offence to make an abusive, threatening or obscene communication by telephone, but neither provision imposes an age-verification or age-gating duty on a service; the broadcasting code is a general content-decency standard for broadcasting licensees rather than an age-gate, and no watershed-hour or minor-access restriction has been located in the Act.

The Penal Code Act, 2010 (Act No. 6 of 2012) criminalizes obscene words or behaviour in a public place as a general offence against public order (s. 84), without reference to an internet or online service, an age threshold for access, or a duty on a publisher or platform.