La tutela della vita privata e familiare nella Dichiarazione Universale dei diritti umani: standard superati o ancora potenziali?

The Universal Declaration includes two different provisions, namely Articles 12 and 16, for the protection of two fundamental spheres of an individual’s life: privacy and family. Drawing from the relevant preparatory works of the Universal Declaration, this chapter questions the role that the Universal Declaration has played in the definition of the key no-tions of these provisions – private life and family – and whether or not the same Declara-tion has influenced the subsequent evolution of the right to respect for private and family life within universal and regional human rights protection systems. It posits that the Univer-sal Declaration was certainly essential for setting the grounds for the international recogni-tion of the need to protect a person’s private life, although it did not specify a definition for that concept. By contrast, the Universal Declaration only reaffirms at international level the protection already afforded to family by States’ internal orders. Yet, it has not provid-ed protection to a specific family model, leaving open as well the notion of family for be-ing interpreted, on a strong anti-discriminatory basis, in light of subsequent social evolu-tions. While this lack of clear-cut definitions may explain why the Universal Declaration has substantially played a limited role in the relevant activity of universal and regional human rights bodies established after its adoption, the same lack may nonetheless open the floor to different developments in this area, as the analysis of the protection of family life in connection with the right to found a family and the right to marry demonstrates.