The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois is a non-profit, non-partisan organization, dedicated to protecting freedom, liberty, equality and justice for all within the United States. With a membership of more than 22,000 across Illinois - a total of more than 400,000 across the nation - the ACLU accomplishes its goals through litigation, lobbying and education programs.

Founded in London in 1961, Amnesty International is a Nobel Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with over 1.8 million members worldwide. Amnesty International undertakes research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights.

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, established in 1997, serves as a center for information and teaching about the Holocaust and contemporary aspects of genocide, houses a resource library, and provides speakers for events. The Center teaches and provides support for teaching about the Holocaust and genocide around the work, past and present, and the relationship to human rights questions.

Loyola’s Center for the Human Rights of Children represents, coordinates, and stimulates efforts to understand, protect and apply the human rights of children in the face of injustice and poverty of body, mind, and spirit.

The Center seeks guidance and inspiration from the tradition of Catholic teachings on social justice as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Centre on Housing and Eviction Rights (COHRE) promotes and protects the right to housing for everyone, everywhere. To achieve this, COHRE has developed a varied work program, guided by international human rights law, and designed to reach as may people as possible.

Responding to the call of Latin America’s poor majorities, Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN) is an interfaith information and action network that mobilizes religious leaders and congregations in Illinois to advance peace, justice and human rights in our hemisphere.  CRLN’s 600 members include lay leaders, pastors, rabbis, bishops, denominational executives, seminary professors, and men and women religious.  Many have traveled to Latin America.  Others have associates there.  Through speakers, workshops, informational updates, action alerts, advocacy initiatives, annual visits to Latin America, and meetings with U.S. policy-makers, CRLN engages religious leaders to speak out for more just U.S.

Citizens Alert, founded in 1967, is Chicago's only police accountability organization working for systemic change in law enforcement agencies and for human, effective law enforcement while advocating for victims of police brutality and misconduct.

Founded in 1996, in response to the federal mandate to demolish more than 100,000 units of public housing nationwide - 18,000 of those units in Chicago - the Coalition to Protect Public Housing (CPPH) is an advocacy group of public housing residents, community-based organizations, religious institutions, businesses, and non-profit organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Community Renewal Society, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, and Metropolitan Tenants Organization all working

The Council on Crime and Justice, a leader in the field of criminal and social justice for over 40 years, provides an independent voice for a balanced approach to criminal justice. The Council has been at the forefront of many new programs in such areas as offender services, alternative sanctions, victim's rights, and restorative justice. The mission of the Council is to build community capacity to address the causes and consequences of crime and violence through research, demonstration, and advocacy.

Heartland Alliance's mission is to advance the human rights and to respond to the human needs of endangered populations – particularly the poor, the isolated, and the displaced – through the provision of comprehensive and respectful services and the promotion of permanent solutions leading to a more just global society.

The Human Rights Center, located in the University of Minnesota Law School, trains and assists the work of human rights professionals and volunteers through five primary programs including: applied human rights research; educational tools; the Upper Midwest Human Rights Fellowship Program, the Hubert H. Humphrey Human Rights and Law Fellowships and other field and training opportunities; the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library; and through learning communities and partnerships.