60 Years of Human Rights

A man and woman holding symbols of the right to peace, food, work and freedom — an olive branch, an ear of grain, a cogwheel, and a length of barbed wire alongside two broken chain links forming the numeral "60°". At the centre, the Italian Republic abbreviation "RI"; to the left, the year 2008; to the right, the initials "MCC" of artist Maria Carmela Colaneri and the mint mark "R"; along the bottom, the inscription "DIRITTI UMANI" (Human Rights) spans the inner field.

Belgium (BE-08 G1), Finland (FI-08 G1), and Portugal (PT-08 G1) issued a €2 commemorative coin for the same occasion.

In the same year that the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948, a new constitution came into force in Italy. This was no coincidence: the Italian republic had just emerged from the ruins of the fascist state and the Second World War, and the founding fathers and mothers of the Assemblea Costituente had made fundamental rights the core of the new state order. Article 2 of the Italian constitution expressly recognises inalienable human rights; the parallel with the UN declaration was deliberate. Italy was among the founding members of the United Nations and supported the declaration, drafted on the initiative of Eleanor Roosevelt with the involvement of delegates from around the world.

The 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — from freedom of speech to the right to work and the prohibition of torture and slavery — are not legally binding under international law today, but have shaped international agreements, national constitutions and court rulings worldwide. In Italy, they enter legal practice indirectly through the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights; the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, of which Italy has been a member since its founding, has issued several rulings against Rome that led to concrete reforms. The declaration thus remains not a closed historical document but an active benchmark. To mark the 60th anniversary of its adoption, Italy issued a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2008.