The right to property, also known as the right to protection of property, is a human right and is understood to establish an entitlement to private property. The right to property is not absolute and states have a wide degree of discretion to limit the rights.

The right to property is enshrined in Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but is not recognised in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The right to protection of property is enshrined in the regional human rights instruments of Europe, Africa and the Americas.

The right to property is one of the most controversial human rights, both in terms of its existence and interpretation. The controversy about the definition of the right meant that it was not included in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) enshrines the right to property as follows:

Thomas Stephen Szasz ( /ˈsɑːs/ SAHSS; born April 15, 1920) is a psychiatrist and academic. Since 1990 he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1970) set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.

His views on special treatment follow from classical liberal roots which are based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others, although he criticized the "Free World" as well as the communist states for their use of psychiatry and "drogophobia". He believes that suicide, the practice of medicine, use and sale of drugs and sexual relations should be private, contractual, and outside of state jurisdiction.