Law / Suriname

Suriname

3 of 4 named instruments researched to a stage, across three of the six areas of law we track: 2 in force and 1 proposed. As of 5 September 2026.

AI law none researched
Privacy law 1
Scraping law 1
Cybersecurity law none researched
Age gating law none researched
News aggregation law 1

in forceenacted but not yet in forceproposedrepealed, withdrawn or blocked

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.

Privacy law1 instrument, 1 proposed

Research summary (150 words)

Suriname has no enacted comprehensive data-protection statute and no operating data-protection supervisory authority. A bill that would create both, the Ontwerpwet Bescherming Privacy en Persoonsgegevens (draft Law on the Protection of Privacy and Personal Data), remains under consideration before De Nationale Assemblee, with no enactment timeline.

As drafted, the bill would define personal data broadly, following the same identified-or-identifiable-natural-person test used in the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, create an independent Commissioner for Personal Data Protection, set a minimum age of sixteen for a child's own consent to processing (with parental consent required below that age), and prohibit processing special categories of personal data, including racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, genetic data, biometric data (defined to include facial images, blood type, fingerprints, DNA analysis, retinal scans, and voice recognition), health data, and data concerning sexual behaviour or orientation, subject to enumerated exceptions.

Comprehensive regime

Draft Law on the Protection of Privacy and Personal Data (Ontwerpwet Bescherming Privacy en Persoonsgegevens)

Wet Bescherming Privacy en PersoonsgegevensDraft text of the Ontwerpwet Bescherming Privacy en Persoonsgegevens

Proposed: draft date not recorded. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

This measure is a draft bill; it binds nobody yet, and what follows describes what it would require if enacted in the form read.

The bill defines privacy as the right to protection of all information about an identified or identifiable living natural person, and defines personal data the same way, an identifiable natural person being one who can be identified directly or indirectly by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier, or one or more factors specific to that person's physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity.

It would create an independent supervisory authority, the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection (Commissaris voor persoonsgegevensbescherming).

Article 7 would set the age at which a child's own consent to processing is valid at sixteen; below that age, processing based on consent would be lawful only where a legal representative gave it, and the controller would have to take reasonable steps to verify that the legal representative did so, with a separate rule that a child's personal data may not be processed in a way inconsistent with the child's interest.

Article 8 would prohibit processing personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade-union membership, and would prohibit processing genetic data, biometric data, health data, or data concerning a person's sexual behaviour or orientation, subject to exceptions listed in the same article.

The bill defines biometric data as personal data resulting from specific technical processing of a natural person's physical, physiological or behavioural characteristics that allows or confirms that person's unique identification, expressly including facial images, blood type, fingerprints, DNA analysis, retinal scans, and voice recognition. The bill remains under consideration before De Nationale Assemblee, with no enactment timeline.

What it requires

Scraping law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (264 words)

Suriname has no scraping-specific statute, so general law governs each dimension separately.

The Wetboek van Strafrecht (Penal Code), as revised by the law of 30 March 2015 (S.B. 2015 no. 44), criminalises hacking at article 187b: access to an automated work is unlawful only where it was obtained by breaking through a security measure, a technical intervention, false signals or a false key, or a false identity, so a plain reading does not reach reading a public, unauthenticated page that defeats no access control, and no reported Surinamese case has tested the point.

Article 187c separately punishes intentionally and unlawfully hindering another person's access to or use of an automated work by flooding it with data. No Surinamese court has ruled on the enforceability of a browsewrap or clickwrap terms-of-service against a scraper.

The Wet Auteursrecht 1913 (Copyright Act), as amended through Staatsblad 2015 no. 83, predates the concept of a machine-readable text-and-data-mining reservation and creates no such exception; its only reproduction exceptions are narrow ones for newspaper-to-newspaper reprinting of news items and for short quotations or press reviews, neither aimed at automated collection or model training, and the Act confers no sui generis database right.

No enacted comprehensive privacy law reaches personal data scraped from a public Surinamese website; a bill that would create one, the draft Wet Bescherming Privacy en Persoonsgegevens, has been pending before the National Assembly's Rapporteurs committee with no enactment timeline.

No Surinamese statute or reported case establishes a scraping-specific unfair-competition, misappropriation or trespass doctrine, and none assigns legal weight to a robots.txt directive or imposes an AI-training-specific rule.

Computer misuse

Wetboek van Strafrecht, Hacking and Denial of Access (arts. 187b-187c)

Wetboek van Strafrecht (G.B. 1911 no. 1, as revised S.B. 2015 no. 44), arts. 187b-187c (hacking and denial of access)Official consolidated text of the Wetboek van Strafrecht as revised by the law of 30 March 2015

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 187b(1) punishes intentionally and unlawfully gaining access to an automated work, or part of one, as hacking, with imprisonment of up to one year and a third-category fine (up to SRD 25,000), or either penalty; access is deemed unlawful specifically where it was obtained by breaking through a security measure, a technical intervention, false signals or a false key, or by assuming a false identity.

Article 187b(2)-(3) raises the penalty to up to four years and a fourth-category fine (up to SRD 50,000) where the offender, having gained unlawful access, then takes over, taps or records the data held on the system, uses its processing capacity for unlawful gain, or pivots through it to a third party's system.

Article 187c separately punishes, with up to one year and a fourth-category fine, intentionally and unlawfully hindering another person's access to or use of an automated work by offering or sending data to it. Because unlawfulness under article 187b turns on defeating a security measure, a technical intervention, or a false signal, key or identity, reading a public, unauthenticated page without any such circumvention falls outside a plain reading of the offence.

The law provides that it takes effect the day after its promulgation in the Staatsblad. De Nationale Assemblee's own legislative record lists this law under Staatsblad 2015 no. 44 and the date 13 April 2015.

What it requires

News aggregation law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (189 words)

Suriname has no press-publisher neighbouring right, no mandatory platform-to-publisher bargaining code, no recognized hot-news misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright law, and no located statute or case law addressing hyperlinking or framing liability specifically; the relevant instrument is the Wet Auteursrecht 1913 (Copyright Act), as amended through Staatsblad 2015 no. 83.

Article 15 lets one newspaper or magazine reprint articles, reports, or other items published in another newspaper or magazine, without the maker's permission, provided the source publication is clearly credited; for articles concerning political disputes, news reports, and miscellaneous items specifically, copyright cannot be reserved against this reprinting at all.

Article 15bis separately permits short quotations from newspaper or magazine articles, even in the form of press reviews (persoverzichten), again with the source and author credited if named in it. Neither provision is capped to a headline-length extract, and no reported Surinamese decision applies either to a systematic news aggregator, as opposed to a traditional press review or a reprinting newspaper.

The Act predates the concept of a machine-readable text-and-data-mining reservation entirely, so no opt-out mechanism of that kind exists, and it creates no sui generis database right.

Snippet reproduction

Wet Auteursrecht 1913, Press Reproduction and Quotation Exceptions (arts. 15, 15bis, 15ter)

Wet Auteursrecht 1913 (G.B. 1913 no. 15), as amended S.B. 2015 no. 83, arts. 15, 15bis, 15ter (press reproduction and quotation)Dutch-language consolidated text of the Wet Auteursrecht 1913, as amended up to Staatsblad 2015 no. 83, reproduced by WIPO Lex

In force since 22 March 1913. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 15 provides that reproducing, without the maker's or their successors' permission, articles, reports or other items (other than novels and short stories) that appeared in a newspaper or magazine, is not an infringement of copyright when done by another newspaper or magazine, provided the source publication is clearly named along with the author if the source names one, and unless copyright has been expressly reserved.

For articles concerning political disputes, and for news reports and miscellaneous items specifically, no such reservation of copyright can be made at all, so those categories can never be withheld from reprinting under article 15. The same reprinting permission reaches foreign newspapers and magazines only for news reports, miscellaneous items, or current articles on economics, politics, or religion.

Article 15bis separately provides that short quotations from articles that appeared in a newspaper or magazine, including in the form of press reviews, are not copyright infringement, provided the source newspaper or magazine is clearly named along with the author if named in the source.

Article 15ter provides that further publication or reproduction of a literary, scientific or artistic work already made public by or on behalf of the public authority is not an infringement, unless copyright was expressly reserved either generally by regulation or in a specific case.

None of these provisions is capped at a headline-length or short-extract threshold distinct from their own terms, and no reported Surinamese decision applies article 15 or 15bis to a systematic news aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets, as opposed to a traditional newspaper reprint or press review.

Note and primary source

This page covers the instruments LexLint has researched to a stage. Instruments named in the corpus but not yet researched are counted in the head and are not listed here. Every entry carries its own primary source on its note page. This is a research index, not legal advice.