The State of Qatar has announced that it has issued Law No.
13 of 2016 Concerning Privacy and Protection of Personal Data
(the Law). Once gazetted, the Law will officially be the
first national level legal regime specifically governing data
protection in the GCC. As such, it is expected to herald a
new era of privacy-related compliance considerations for data
controllers and processors in Qatar and the wider Middle East
region, with neighbouring nations anticipated to follow suit in
short order with their own national level privacy and data
protection regimes.
We discuss the new Law (and its potential implications, from a
compliance standpoint and otherwise) in further detail below.
Please note that this article has been prepared on the basis of the
approved draft Law, and the official Arabic version will be
published in the Official Gazette shortly. Although we do not
anticipate material changes to the Official Gazette version versus
the approved draft Law, the
