The General Presidency of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice

The General Presidency of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is the entity responsible for enjoining good and forbidding wrong, and to do so with patience and leniency in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is colloquially called the commission.

The General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was officially recognized as an independent official entity in 1926, although it had been carrying out its duties since 1900, a full thirty-two years before the unification of the Kingdom.

The General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice administers its duties from the capital, Riyadh. Its organizational structure includes several departments, offices, and agencies, directly linked to the Prime Minister. The head of the commission is appointed by a Royal Order to the rank of minister. The first person appointed was Sheikh Abdullatif Bin Abdulaziz al-Sheikh.

The General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has several responsibilities, including combating extortion, writing reports and submitting them to relevant authorities when discovering violations of its field of specialty, and promoting awareness of the dangers of drug use to both society at large and individuals.

The General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice was developed significantly in each era of the Kingdom's history, most prominently in 2016, when the commission’s work was regulated. Its law was approved by the Council of Ministers, which specified ethics and frameworks to control and regulate its employees' work and increase their efficiency.

This new regulation of the General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice and Articles One and Two of the Law of Criminal Procedure, are the prominent legal foundations for its work.

Based on the annual report of the commission's works and programs for the fiscal year 2021, beneficiaries of the awareness and guidance programs implemented totaled 13 million, which encompassed the work of 907 thousand activists. In terms of publishing and digital awareness, the commission published an average of over 1.1 million pieces of awareness material in its campaigns, receiving approximately 53 million views.

On May 12, 2022, the General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice launched a project to develop the strategic plan and performance indicators for the General Presidency, implemented by the Institute of Public Administration. The project aims to review and develop the commission's strategic plan through analysis and review of the current plan and analysis of performance indicators, with an analytical study of executive programs and preparing a road map for implementing the developed strategic plan and executive programs.