Category: Article

The Government of the Sultanate of Oman is built upon the principle of the separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of government. The Council of Ministers represents the executive branch, Majlis Oman serves as the legislative body, and the Supreme Judicial Council oversees the judiciary. This blog post will explore the role of the key player in the executive branch of the government: The Council of Ministers.

Now that it has been established that obtaining an Omani passport does not equate to obtaining Omani nationality, this post will explore the paths set by the Omani Nationality Law promulgated by Royal Decree 38/2014 for obtaining Omani nationality. Pursuant to this law, there are three paths for obtaining nationality in Oman: by origin, by reinstatement, and by grant from His Majesty the Sultan. This post will provide details on each one of these three paths.

The Omani passport and the Omani nationality are closely interlinked topics, but they are governed by two separate pieces of legislation: The Law of the Omani Passport and the Omani Nationality Law. A passport is a travel document given by a state, but it does not equate to nationality. In this blog post, we are going to highlight the six different kinds of passports or travel documents available in Oman and the conditions for obtaining them, which as will be illustrated below, does not always require Omani nationality.

The types of passports are determined by the Law of the Omani Passport. However, due to the fact that some types of passports are issued by the Foreign Ministry, and not the Royal Oman Police, certain provisions relating to those passports are also governed by the Law Governing the Foreign Ministry.

A country’s constitution is the most essential legal document in a legal system for a variety of reasons: It regulates the country’s governance structure, sets the fundamental rights of individuals, and is the most supreme legal document in a country that prevails over all other laws. Therefore, it is of vast importance to identify the constitutional statutes to apply laws correctly and to fairly regulate life and society.

The Omani Basic Statute of the State was first promulgated in 1996 by Sultan Qaboos by Royal Decree 101/96, as a gift to the people of Oman. The Basic Statute of the State provided a general legal framework upon which Oman operates, establishing its status and role as a constitution in Oman. However, since it is not formally called a constitution (or a Dostour in Arabic) and was promulgated merely by royal decree, some may doubt its legal status as the constitution.

To answer this question, this post will examine the Basic Statute of the State from a number of dimensions, namely, its name, its supremacy over other documents, its content, and its entrenchment, all of which are key attributes of constitutional documents.

A bilateral investment treaty (BIT) is an agreement between two states designed to encourage and protect investments made by nationals or companies from one country in the other. They provide legal assurances to investors, fostering a stable environment for cross-border investments. Many countries around the world have domestic laws that provide protection to foreign investors, for example, Oman has the Foreign Capital Investment Law, however, BITs make the duty to provide this protection a legal obligation under public international law and offer investors the ability to resort to international arbitration to enforce their rights under the BIT without the need to have a contract between the state and the investor that provides for arbitration.