Jurisprudential and Legal Conceptualization of Children’s Privacy

Abstract

This article aims to examine the jurisprudential and legal conceptualization of children’s privacy. Privacy refers to a sphere of personal life into which, according to customary norms and the law, others are expected not to intrude without consent and over which individuals are entitled to exercise control. Given the lack of explicit and transparent legal provisions concerning children’s privacy, and because children, due to their physical vulnerability, young age, and limited capacity for self-defense, require special protection in this respect, the issue warrants particular attention. Although the concept of privacy has not been addressed explicitly as an independent subject in religious sources, its protection has been emphasized through such principles and prohibitions as the prohibition of spying and intrusive investigation, the prohibition of entering homes without permission, the prohibition of disclosing others’ secrets, eavesdropping, unauthorized visual observation, defamation and ridicule, as well as the prohibition of suspicion, backbiting, and similar conduct. Iranian law likewise lacks a comprehensive definition of privacy, and the relevant rules are dispersed across various legal provisions and are, in some instances, ambiguous. Using a descriptive-analytical method and library-based data collection, the present study explains the concept, manifestations, and jurisprudential and legal foundations of children’s privacy and examines its conceptual scope in the Qur’an, hadiths and narrations, consensus, rational arguments, international instruments—including the Convention on the Rights of the Child—and the statutory laws of Iran. In this framework, children’s privacy is examined under the categories of physical and sexual privacy, informational privacy, spiritual privacy, and spatial privacy.