Decree BlogWe are delighted to announce today the launch of Decree Intel—a database of original Omani legal research material developed in-house by Decree that provides explanatory notes, overview of government entities, and summaries of Supreme Court cases and MJLA Fatwas.
Just over a year ago, we launched the beta version of Decree to create a definitive English language resource for Omani royal decrees, laws, ministerial decisions, regulations, and treaties. This month, Decree has turned one, and to celebrate this occasion, I thought it would be appropriate to share a progress report that showcases the considerable amount of content we have made available during the course of 2022, as well as mentioning our ambitions for 2023.
As previously announced, starting January 2023, Decree will graduate out of its beta phase and will become available as a paid subscription service.
It has not been a year since the beta version of Decree launched, and the website has already grown to become the biggest English language database of Omani legislation available anywhere with a complete title index of all Omani royal decrees and ministerial decisions published in the Official Gazette since 1974 onwards, a full-text catalogue of essentially every single royal decrees issued in the past six years, a collection of over a 150 standalone laws with all their amendments consolidated, the most comprehensive catalogue of Omani treaties available on the internet with over 800 documents, along with a growing collection of the most recent ministerial decisions and regulations issued in the Official Gazette.
It has been less than eight months since Decree was launched, and it has already become the definitive source for accessing Omani laws and royal decrees in English. However, even though Decree is the biggest English language index and repository of Omani legislation available anywhere, the reality remains that Decree has only provided access to a portion of Omani legislation, namely, primary legislation in the form of royal decrees and laws.
As our users are fully aware, primary legislation provides only the general legal principles of the law, while the technical details are found in secondary legislation issued through ministerial decisions. These decisions are issued separately from royal decrees and at a later time.
Today, we are taking the first step at addressing this gap in our content by launching a complete English language index of all ministerial decisions published in the Official Gazette from 1972 onwards, which brings up the total of titles found on Decree to over 9,000 royal decrees, ministerial decisions, and treaties.
At this moment, the ministerial decisions section of Decree is merely an index that provides access to the original Arabic version along with a machine translated version generated using Google Translate service. This, of course, is only a temporary situation as we experiment with translating key ministerial decisions as they come out, and hopefully eventually provide a full translation of all new ministerial decisions immediately upon their publication.
You can navigate our ministerial decisions index by browsing the Ministerial Decision Section, by using Decree’s search engine, and by navigating through the tags found under each ministerial decision.
We are launching on Decree today a new section for publishing the full text of treaties ratified by royal decree.
In Oman, treaties obtain the power of law upon their ratification by royal decree and become directly applicable in a manner identical to domestic legislation. Therefore, they are key legislative instruments that all legal professionals need to access.
The treaties section on Decree is identical to the treaties section on Qanoon, and has over 600 bilateral and multilateral treaties that Oman has ratified from 1974 onwards in the area of taxation, free trade, investment, environment, human rights, and all other aspects of life.
Treaties uploaded to Decree are tagged by counterparty and topic. This will enable our users to easily view all the treaties signed with, for example, the United Kingdom, or view all the treaties signed in the area of, for example, avoidance of double taxation.
You can also browse all the treaties available on Decree by using the brand new Browse button found on the main page of Decree.
When we first launched Qanoon back in 2015, we launched it with the intention of enabling legal professionals in Oman to do their jobs easily, effectively, and efficiently. Little did we know that it would fundamentally transform the legal sector in Oman by becoming the definitive source for accessing Omani legislation in Arabic and enabling the public to be well-informed and up-to-date on the most recent legal updates. Indeed, Qanoon’s impact has been so far-reaching, even international organisations rely on it for their research and publications.
There are many factors that contribute to Decree’s success in producing the world-class translations that can be found on our website, and one of these factors is certainly our reliance on the Irfan Rulebook, a guidebook that was collectively developed by a group of expert bilingual Omani lawyers and translators with the aim of improving the quality and ensuring the consistency in the translations of Omani legislation.
We are delighted to announce that Decree now has over 100 standalone key laws translated in full in English with all their amendments consolidated, along with more than 400 royal decrees with their whole attachments available. This includes everything from the Basic Statute of the State and the Law of Majlis Oman, to the Personal Data Protection Law and the System of Escrow Account for Real Estate Development Projects.
We are continuously adding new translations on a weekly basis, and we aim to provide a complete catalogue of all Omani key laws in force by the end of this year.
You can learn more about our translation methodology on this link, and search our full catalogue by using our search engine on our homepage.
On 10 March 2020, His Majesty issued a royal order establishing a supreme committee to overlook all matters relating to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 and granting this committee the power to issue decisions as necessary to keep the virus at bay.