Dic / Usages: to abuse rights, rights abuse

A. Usages of abuse as a verb include:

  1.

• If someone is abused, they are treated cruelly and violently.
• to maltreat, esp physically or sexually. 
• to treat someone in a cruel and violent way, often sexually. 
• to treat badly. 
• to hurt or injure by maltreatment; ill-use.

  2.

• If you abuse something, you use it in a wrong way or for a bad purpose.
• to use incorrectly or improperly; misuse. 
• to deliberately use something for the wrong purpose or for your own advantage; to treat something so badly that you start to destroy it.
• to use wrongly or improperly or excessively; to change the inherent purpose or function of something.
• to use wrongly or improperly; misuse.

B. Such phrases as 'to abuse rights(as a verb)', '(human-)rights abuse(as a noun)' seem to take for granted that the actor who commits such an abuse is not the rights holder whose rights are abused by that actor, but not always.


C. Some searches of its usages:

1. Technology must not be used to abuse rights. ... sanctions on foreign entities who help authoritarian governments use modern technologies to commit human rights abuses. ... [Link]


2. Why do governments abuse human rights? ... Because the abuse of human beings is abhorrent, we normatively expect governments to respect those rights. However, throughout human history, abuse of human [beings] has been the norm. Governments abuse rights because doing so helps leaders exercise, expand, or retain their power. Normatively, this is troubling. Yet as a positive matter, it should not be surprising. We begin the essay explaining why this is so, and then turn to the question that broadly captures the research agendas of those studying the topic of human rights: how can people constrain Leviathan? ... Domestically, democracy and economic output both reduce rights abuse, while large populations increase repression. ... For instance, the domestic judiciary of a country influences the extent to which human rights treaties constrain government abuse of rights. ... ... [Link]


3. Mental hospitals 'abuse rights' ... Chinese psychiatric patients are routinely subjected to abuse of their rights in a system that makes scant distinction between kinds of mental illness, an overseas-based human rights group said in a recent report. ... The report, titled "The Darkest Corners," details the grim conditions and human rights abuses faced by people who are committed to psychiatric care against their will ...  ... [some source]


4. The TSA really does abuse rights and take away freedom. ... [Link]


5. Businesses help China's government abuse rights. ... [Link]


6. these interventions were not sufficient to protect older persons from rights abuse within the healthcare context. ... the case today where some health workers abuse rights of the elderly through verbal, physical and psychological abuse. ... [Link]


7. In the fifth and final part of our series on the implications of a proposed international treaty addressing human right abuses involving businesses, IHRB's Salil Tripathi offers his reflections on the road ahead. ... because some companies knowingly or unintentionally abuse rights, ... corporate abuse of human rights ... corporate rights abuses ... [Link]


8.

The prevalent type of 'abuse' studied in Europe is the abuse of individual rights. ...

The more numerous constitutional rights are, and the more the state alleges that it has to promote one or the other constitutional right, the more likely it is that the state will abuse rights to the detriment of other (even fundamental) rights. The increasing constitutionalization of private relations creates situations where the right that is abused in a private relation is a constitutional one; likewise, constitutional rights are used in private relations and might be abused to the detriment of other interests. The constitutionalization of so many interests changes the position of fundamental rights. It seems to me that fundamental rights are not sufficiently protected against abuses committed in the name of other rights or governmental intrusions intended to foster rights. ... [some source]