This year for Fanpop Human Rights Awareness Month, I am doing an icon theme. I want to have four Human Rights Icon Contests (one for every week of December), with different themes for each week.

Themes
November 27-December 7: The first theme will be World AIDS day, which is December 1st. This contest will start now, and go until December 6th. Voting will occur on the 7th.
December 8-December 14: The second theme will be Celebrate Human Rights, in accordance with the theme for link on December 10. This contest will start on the 8th, and go until the 13th. Voting occurs on the 14th.
December 15-...

December 1st is World AIDS Day, which makes it the perfect day to begin Human Rights Awareness Month here on Fanpop.

Now the disease itself is not a human rights concern. True, the HIV epidemic is devastating, but we can't charge the virus with human rights violations. What is a human rights concern is the lack of preventative measures, as well as treatment for those infected, the world over. Secondly, the stigma of being HIV positive is still a source of major discrimination. And that is definitely a human rights concern.

In order to help with the discrimination problem, the World AIDS Day Official...

Background

Rachel Corrie was a 23 year old college student and human rights activist from Olympia, Washington. On March 16, 2003, she was run over and killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, while defending a Palestinian home from demolition. A gifted writer, Rachel left behind a series of diaries and emails from an early age which were crafted into a play by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner. While the United States government in its annual human rights report describes Rachel as "a US citizen peace activist" and designates her as a human rights observer, this is often obscured...

Author's Note: I would like you all to know that this task was exceedingly difficult. First of all, I narrowed it down to ten in link and that was hard enough. But I decided to organize them into a list like this, and that was tremendously hard. All of the people on this list beat out heavy competition, and I respect the one in tenth place as much as I respect the one in first place. There was a lot of switching around. Also, this list is incredibly biased.