Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER) is a nonprofit, community-based research organization that originated in 1988 as a collaborative effort between Ramsey County Human Services, Communidades Latinos Unidos en Servicio (CLUES), and Metropolitan State University to address the lack of information about Latinos and Latino issues in Minnesota’s public discourse. HACER is housed within the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA).

HACER’s mission, is to provide the Minnesota Latino community the ability to create and control information about itself in order to affect institutional decisions and public policy. 

The Resource Center of the Americas is a Minneapolis-based non-profit with a global vision.

We are a center for policy analysis, education, community organizing, and change. Our work promotes mutual respect, sustainable development, ecological integrity, and human rights in the era of globalization. We seek to build more just relationships by addressing the root causes of conflict in the hemisphere, including the economic, political, and historical relationship between the economic "north" and the economic "south."

The North Dakota Human Rights Coalition is a broad-based coalition of individuals and organizations with an interest in the furtherance of human rights in North Dakota. They work toward the enhancement of human rights in North Dakota through information, education and legislative action.

Workers Interfaith Network unites religious leaders, labor leaders, and workers to address economic disparities by demanding improved wages, benefits, and working conditions assuring that our community’s economic abundance is shared by all.

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.

Nancy Arnison is serving as the Director for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's (ELCA) World Hunger Program. She has previously served as Deputy Director and Director of Policy and Programs at Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Program Director of Physicians for Human Rights, Boston, Director of Resource and Development at United Theological Seminary, and as an attorney at Briggs & Morgan Law Firm. Ms. Arnison has served as a lecturer on a number of topics including international human rights, economic and health issues for women and children, and humanitarian law.

Nancy Bothne worked as the Midwest Regional Director for Amnesty International - USA from 1994 to 2004. In that position she served as primary spokesperson for Amnesty International in the Midwest and was charged with developing and implementing strategies for Amnesty's human rights agenda in the region. Beginning Fall 2005, Ms. Bothne will be pursuing a Ph.D. in community psychology at DePaul University, studying how human rights trauma impacts the community as well as individuals, and how communities recover and rebuild themselves following such trauma.

Marcella David is a Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, joining the faculty in 1995. She has studied Human Rights and Comparative Law as a Ford Foundation Fellow in Public International Law at the Harvard Law School. In that capacity, she participated in an investigatory mission to Iraq, traveled through South Africa, and researched the impact of economic sanctions in both countries. Professor David's research interests include the use of economic and other sanctions, international criminal law, and questions related to international organizations.

Sharon Hutchinson is a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Over the past 25 years, she has conducted periodic research on war-provoked processes of social and cultural change in southern Sudan. She has served as a monitor on the Civilian Protection Monitoring Team - Sudan as well as an advisor to numerous international humanitarian aid organizations operating in Sudan.