Category: Announcements

We are launching today the free beta version of Decree Saudi Arabia. This version of Decree offers full-text of English-translated Saudi royal decrees, laws, ministerial decisions, and other content published in Umm Al-Qura Newspaper, i.e. the Saudi official gazette, on a weekly basis.

We are still in the early stages of building the English database of Decree Saudi Arabia, and we welcome feedback from our users regarding items from the backlog of Saudi legislation that they would like to see translated on Decree.

Similar to the Omani version of Decree, Decree Saudi Arabia is linked with Qanoon Saudi Arabia, and it is possible to use the English website to locate legislation items even if they are not translated so that the user can view the original document or use Google translate to access the document.

Decree Saudi Arabia also has its own free weekly newsletter that notifies users of the contents of new issues of Umm Al-Qura.

Please note that the login details of Decree.om are NOT linked with the login details of Decree Saudi Arabia. Upon the official launch of the service, both services will be accessible using a unified access system.

Decree Saudi Arabia is available free of charge until the end of the year. It will be available as an add-on to Decree.om customers.

You can stay up to date with Decree Saudi Arabia by following our Saudi LinkedIn account.

Decree Risk has become a valuable resource for organisations dealing with large numbers of small and medium Omani enterprises, such as utility companies and banks, who need to submit liquidation claims for unpaid bills and or make an objection to the government to block a legal transformation when any of these small and medium enterprises enter into liquidation or attempt to undergo a legal transformation.

Today, we are taking Decree Risk to the next level by announcing Risk Watchlist—a tool that allows organisations to monitor future risk incidents by adding the CR number of a target company on the Risk Watchlist to receive immediate alerts when any of these target companies appear in a risk announcement.

We are delighted to announce that Decree now offers translation attestation services for Decree content through Fal Translate. Fal Translate is a boutique legal translation office registered in the Sultanate of Oman with a wealth of experience in legal translation.

Decree signed earlier this week a memorandum of understanding with the Modern College of Business and Science (MCBS) to cooperate in the fields of legal awareness activity, professional development programmes, community service, and other fields. MCBS staff and students are already regular attendees of Decree events, and Decree and MCBS intend to collaborate in hosting a number of joint activities that target MCBS and the wider community in collaboration with public and private sector partners.

MCBS has also recently subscribed to Decree and plans on using Decree content to inform its business operations and to supplement its legal educational materials.

We are launching today Decree Risk—a brand new structured database intended to help organisations engaging with Omani businesses manage their risk by providing timely updates on liquidation, capital reduction, legal form transformation, and other risks associated with Omani companies.

We have been experimenting over the past two months with adding a standalone button to let users download the content of Decree as a pre-formatted PDF. Even though it has always been possible to download content from Decree using the Print PDF option available in most browsers, a number of users have spoken to us asking for this to be done more easily, and we are happy to finally have this feature enabled.

The year 2023 was an exciting year for Decree. Decree was formally incorporated, we started our commercial operations, and managed to make available in English every single royal decree and ministerial decision published in the Official Gazette in the year 2023 at a speed and quality never seen before. In fact, we do not believe that in the history of this country had the entire body of Omani legislation of a whole year been ever made available in English before by any person or organisation.

As requested by some of our users, we are making changes to our newsletter to provide subscribers of our free newsletter with new royal decree alerts and weekly updates on the content of the Official Gazette as soon as they are available.

This change will increase the frequency at which you will receive emails from Decree. If you are happy with receiving monthly updates only and would not like to receive immediate royal decree alerts and weekly Official Gazette updates, you can configure your preferences using the links found at the bottom of any email sent by Decree.

If you have not subscribed to our free newsletter, you can do so using the button below:

Decree signed last week a memorandum of understanding with the Omani Lawyers Association (OLA) to cooperate in the fields of legal awareness and access to legislation. Under this MOU, Decree will collaborate with OLA in organising legal awareness events in Arabic and English, will provide special rates for subscribing to Decree to small Omani law firms not practising in association with a foreign law firm, and will provide members of OLA the opportunity to advertise on Qanoon.

The special Decree subscription rates offered to small Omani law firms under this MOU are available until the expiry of the MOU in August 2025.

We are delighted to announce that Decree will be co-hosting, along with Sultan Qaboos University, the Middle East School on Internet Governance (MEAC-SIG). This event is organised by ICANN, the Internet Society, and RIPE NCC. It will take place in Muscat for the very first time in December 2023.

MEAC-SIG is a unique hybrid course on internet governance targeting lawyers, techies, and policymakers from various sectors including the government, private sector, academia, the technical community, and civil society. It covers a range of internet governance topics, encompassing both policy and technical aspects. In addition to providing an overview of how the internet functions, this year’s MEAC-SIG will also cover geopolitics and internet governance, internet public policy, internet fragmentation, human rights, cybersecurity and encryption, privacy and data protection, as well as content regulation.

MEAC-SIG this year will be conducted in a hybrid format where online sessions will be conducted in October and November 2023, followed by a 3-day in-person event in Muscat in December where participants who successfully complete the online course from across the Middle East and adjoining countries will come to Muscat.

MEAC-SIG will be conducted exclusively in English.

We are delighted to have contributed to bringing this exceptional course to Oman, and hope to see many of you register to participate in this event.

The participants of the programme will be selected on the basis of their background with a view to maximizing the diversity of the participants. Only individuals who successfully complete the online component of the course will receive invitations to attend the offline component taking place in December.

Applications for MEAC-SIG will close on 3 September 2023. For more information and the application link, please visit the MEAC-SIG website.