Bunafsha Gulakova is based in Vienna, Austria, where she promotes the legal protection of human rights as a freelance expert for the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Open Society Justice Initiative, the European Commission, and the United Nations Development Programme. Her work addresses rights issues in Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan. Previously Bunafsha was a legal advisor with the Institute for Justice Sector Development, also in Vienna. In her native Tajikistan, she was a co-founder and director of the NGO Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law in Dushanbe, which renders free legal help to vulnerable groups in the country. Under her supervision the Bureau became a prominent non-profit legal defense organization, which succeeded in applying international mechanisms of human rights on a national level. Bunafsha was also an attorney with the international law firm Contract, where she represented clients in civil and criminal cases. She received a master’s degree in international human rights law from the University of Oxford and a law degree from Tajik State National University. As a PILnet International Fellow, Bunafsha actively engaged in the legal protection of human rights by joining forces for international law development worldwide.