A human rights abuse is abuse of people in a way that violates any fundamental human rights.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (generally accepted as the international standard for human rights), fundamental human rights are violated when:

• A certain race, creed, or group is denied recognition as a "person". (Article 2)
• Men and women are not treated as equal. (Article 2)
• Different racial or religious groups are not treated as equal. (Article 2)
• A person is sold as or used as a slave. (Article 4)
• Cruel or unusual punishment is used on a person (such as torture or execution). (Article 5)
• Punishments are dealt arbitrarily or unilaterally, without a proper and fair trial. (Article 11)
• Arbitrary interference into personal, or private lives by agents of the state. (Article 12)
• Citizens are forbidden to leave their country. (Article 13)
• Freedom of speech or religion are denied. (Articles 18 & 19)
• The right to join a union is denied. (Article 23)
• Education is denied. (Article 26)

In practice, human rights abuses are more common in dictatorships or theocracies, whereas they are rarer in democracies, where they are mostly not structural. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International (AI) have criticized the use of the death penalty, however, in some democracies such as the United States, particularly when the penalty is used against those who were minors when they committed the crime in question. Only a very few countries do not violate human rights at all according to AI. In their 2004 human rights report, (covering 2003,) the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Costa Rica are the only (mappable) countries that did not violate human rights.

Many international non-governmental organizations such as International Freedom of Expression eXchange, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International monitor and condemn human rights abuses.

See also

• Human experimentation