The constitutional court of Italy overturned [judgment, PDF, in Italian] a mandate that went back to ancient Roman law, when it granted mothers the right to name their children with their own surnames on Tuesday. In its decision, the court declared that the practice of automatically naming a child with the father’s last name was “unlawful.” The case was referred to Italy’s highest court after an appellate court in Genoa initially ruled against an Italian-Brazilian couple who wanted to name their son both surnames, a practice that is traditional in South America. A lawyer for the couple argued that not allowing the parents to name their child with both names violated the mother’s rights. In 2014 the European Court of Human Rights [official website] admonished Italy’s law that required a child’s surname to be that of the father, declaring [court decision, PDF] that such a practice “was based solely on discrimination on the ground of the parents’ sex, and was incompatible with the principle of non-discrimination.”

Women’s rights in Europe, and worldwide, have long been an issue. Last March the UN Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and practice [official website] warned [press release] that the progress made in achieving women’s rights remains under continuous threat. They stressed that, “no country in the world has achieved full substantive equality of women.” The Working Group, composed of five rights experts, expressed concern that women still do not have the rights they deserve in much of the world, indicating that political participation of women remains low, that women still do not receive equal pay rates in much of the world and that women are vastly underrepresented in the leadership of decision-making bodies. That February the UN reported attacks [JURIST report] on young girls for seeking an education in at least 70 countries. Same-sex marriages are also being reformed in Italy. This May the Italian parliament voted [JURIST report] in favor of recognizing same-sex civil unions.