#fact Worst places in the world for women: #pakistan

Naila Farhat was a regular 13-year-old girl from a poor family. She was studying at a government school when her science teacher began to sexually harass her.

One afternoon, as she walked home from class with her younger brother and some classmates, the teacher and an accomplice stopped her in the street and demanded she go with them.

"He [the teacher] threatened me, saying he would beat me or burn me if I didn't go with him," says Naila. "I told him there was no way I would go with him. One of them grabbed my arm and the other threw acid on me. They had it in a big plastic container."

That was in 2003, in a village in Layyah district, in the far south of Punjab province. Naila received some basic medical treatment at a hospital in the provincial capital, Lahore, and in Islamabad, but was soon sent home.

Naila, whose father ran a tea-stall in her village, received 30% burns from the acid, an all-too-common form of punishment in Pakistan, meant to horribly disfigure women. It is often the response to sexual advances or marriage proposals being spurned in a sexually repressed society where men take this as an intolerable humiliation.

Both arms, her leg, her scalp, her face, were burnt. One ear was gone. One eye doesn't work even today.

"I went to so many places seeking treatment but I was turned away everywhere," says Naila.

Naila was stuck at home for the next four years. Then, a field officer from Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) came to her village and the non-governmental organisation, which has the support of a UK charity Acid Survivors Trust International, has seen to her medical care and battle for justice.

Naila has been through multiple operations but has many more to come. She hopes surgery on her bad eye this summer will restore the sight. Her face is still brutally marked from the attack, although three hair transplant surgeries have given her back her hair.

The school teacher simply bribed the police and a local court and was dropped from the case. Naila did pursue the accomplice, making history by taking the acid attack case all the way to the supreme court in late 2009. The accomplice was eventually jailed for 12 years.

Naila is now studying again, trying to regain her lost school years. Her ambition is to become a lawyer.

"I am here today because of ASF and the support of my family," says Naila.

Since it started in 2006, ASF has been notified of 520 acid attacks against women. It is campaigning for new laws to restrict the trade in battery acid and provide rehabilitation for the victims.