Adopting a ‘user perspective’ might open promising new avenues to human rights research, especially in a context of global legal pluralism that is characterized by a multiplicity of actors. This article evaluates the conceptual value of the approach by confronting it with three forceful objections to the notions of human rights ‘users’ and ‘usage’ as they emerge from the social sciences, in particular from sociology. These include the ‘Arendtian’ argument concerning the problem of the ‘right to (...)