Ms Isil Gachet is the Director of the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights. She was appointed to this position in January 2009. She began her professional life with 8 years as a social worker, mainly dealing with projects devoted to literacy among immigrants, immigrant women, and the integration of unemployed youths. She joined the Council of Europe in 1984, and since then has been an international civil servant of this Organisation, where she worked first in the Youth sector, and from 1989 onwards, in Human Rights. She spent 5 years working as an administrator in the Media Division in the Directorate of Human Rights, where she was responsible for questions dealing with freedom of expression. In 1994, she was asked to provide the secretarial services necessary for the setting up of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI). In 1997 she was appointed Executive Secretary to ECRI in the General Directorate of Human Rights.