By 1979 she and her husband had four children and the family lived in a house they owned in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan.
[1] She has no access at home to the internet and her country is described as an "information black hole", only surpassed in this respect by North Korea.
She says that people who campaign for human rights are watched and they are subject to not only arrest but pressure is also applied to members of their family.
[6] She was shortlisted for the 2021 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders together with Loujain al-Hathloul from Saudi Arabia and Yu Wensheng from China.
That year's award was given to the lawyer Yu Wensheng who was serving a four-year sentence in China after deciding to defend other people's human rights.
[7] Achilova was in the news again in November 2023 when she was prevented from attending that years Martin Ennals Award ceremony in Geneva.