The Human Rights Clearinghouse
When someone needs help, they should reach it in three clicks, not thirty minutes of reading. That's the Human Rights Clearinghouse we're building, and why.
When someone needs help, they should reach it in three clicks, not thirty minutes of reading. The Human Rights Clearinghouse is a single, low-friction way to find a local, potentially life-saving resource fast: action first, the reading later.
Why it has to be fast
Picture a caseworker with a child who needs shelter tonight. She opens her laptop and loses the next twenty minutes to paragraphs, pop-ups, and photo galleries, scrolling for a phone number that should have taken seconds to find.
Ruby Guillen lived that scene for 25 years as an emergency responder for Los Angeles County child welfare, assessing the safety of more than 7,000 children. She built the Clearinghouse out of what she learned there: when time is critical, slow access to the right resource costs something measured in people. Our hardest crises are, at their core, a problem of getting the right information to the right person in time.
“My objective is to streamline access to human-rights resources across the United States, enabling individuals to locate desired resources, campaigns, and events within three navigational steps or fewer.” — Ruby Guillen
The biggest human-rights sites do the opposite: they front-load narrative and imagery before you can act. Those stories matter, but not between a person in crisis and the help they came for.
How it works
You reach what you need three ways, together:
- Browse by purpose. Follow the issues the Affinity Group works on, from the Universal Periodic Review to racial justice, disability rights, and Pride, to the resources, campaigns, and events behind each.
- Or jump straight to a need. Shelter, food, crisis and suicide support, domestic violence, legal aid, disability services, and more. These are the categories a person actually searches for in a hurry.
- Tell it where you are. Choose your state or territory, or use your location, and see what’s near you.
The result is what matters: a person in crisis reaches the hotline before the moment passes; a family new to a state finds legal aid without knowing a single organization’s name. Help reached in seconds, not sessions.
Built to serve the public, not to profit
The Clearinghouse is a joint effort. The UNA-USA Human Rights Affinity Group is building it with AP0110, the technology partner led by Daniel Romo, as Digital Public Infrastructure: technology built to serve the public rather than profit from it. It answers a question Ruby has spent her career asking: what if technology were built for the people who need it most?
Where it stands
We’re building it now, in the open. The work in front of us is the directory itself: curating trusted resources state by state, so every category leads somewhere that helps. If you want to know the moment it’s ready, tell us where to reach you.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Human Rights Clearinghouse?
It is a single, low-friction place to reach a US human-rights resource, campaign, or event in three clicks or fewer. You tell it what you need and where you are, and it takes you straight to help. No sifting through long articles or photo galleries first.
Why build another human-rights website?
Because when someone needs help, speed is everything, and the major sites bury resources behind narrative and imagery. The Clearinghouse inverts that, actionable pathways first, the reading later. It comes from frontline experience, where slow access to the right resource is a real cost.
Is the Clearinghouse available now?
We are building it now. The work in front of us is the directory itself, curating trusted resources state by state, so every category leads somewhere real. We will open it as soon as it is ready.
Who is building the Clearinghouse?
The UNA-USA Human Rights Affinity Group, with AP0110, the technology partner led by Daniel Romo, is building it as Digital Public Infrastructure, technology built to serve the public rather than profit from it.