Galima Bukharbaeva graduated from the Journalism Department of the Tashkent State University in 1997, when she began working for Internews as a television news producer and correspondent for the Zamon news program.

At Internews, Bukharbaeva worked with journalists from the United States, France, and other countries, from whom she became acquainted with the western and ethical journalistic standards that are fundamentally different from principles of Soviet journalism, whose aim is to propagate government policies.

Bukharbaeva was the correspondent in Uzbekistan for the Agence France Presse news agency between 1998 and 2003; and from 2000, she directed the Uzbekistan Project of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), whose aim is to provide independent and professionally written coverage of events in Central Asia, by local journalists. Bukharbaeva's reportage brought attention to the slaughter of thousands of innocent people in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan, May 13, 2005. Bukharbaeva, herself, survived being shot while running from armored personnel carriers, and continued to cover the massacre.

As a result of her reports, Bukharbaeva fled persecution from the Uzbekistan government, whose General Prosecutor opened a criminal case against her, and continued her education at Columbia University School of Journalism, in New York. In March 2006, Bukharbaeva organized a conference at Columbia University on the Andijan massacre.

Since 2007, Bukharbaeva writes for the online journal uznews.net, from Germany.