Can you imagine what it is like to live every day, horrified of the way you look?

Acid violence is where corrosive acid is thrown in the victim's face. The acid is so strong that it dissolves skin and flesh, it can even destroy bone. Often, these attacks are motivated by rejection of marriage proposals, refusal of sexual advances or perceived social disgrace. Worryingly women are now being targeted in land and family disputes, seen as powerless victims. Underlying the specifics of each attack are the prejudices that still exist towards women in many communities.

The effects of acid violence on the victim are horrific. The acid will dissolve skin and flesh, it can even destroy bone. If it reaches the eye it can cause irreparable destruction and blindness. The scarring and disfigurement of the victims face will usually lead to isolation and seclusion from society.

Women are often particularly targeted in acid attacks as their beauty in many societies is their most important mean of advancing in society. A female victim will probably have great difficulty in finding work and if unmarried will have little chance of finding a husband. So the trauma is not only physical but also psychological and social.

• In 2005 the Bangladesh hospital treated 460 patients, with 150 receiving surgery.
• 42 people were convicted for acid violence in Bangladesh in 2005

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Our partner has developed a strategy whereby they can enter a community and, using local knowledge and facilities, establish a new treatment centre. Together with the treatment centre our partner carries out a lot of legal and advocacy work to ensure laws are changed and acid attackers are prosecuted. It is important that the victims feel that justice is being done to their attackers. In order to achieve this appropriate laws have to be in place.

Their first acid hospital was set up in Dhaka the capital of Bangladesh. Since 2000, when our partner established their first clinic the rate of attacks in Bangladesh has dropped from 500 to 300 per year.

Our partner is now also working in Uganda and Cambodia. Around the centre in Uganda a pressure garment manufacturing centre has also been established, staffed and run by acid attack survivors. Plans are now underway to build a new centre in Pakistan, where there are currently over 1000 attacks each year (Human Rights Watch).

As the work of our partner becomes more widely known, more and more stories of these painful attacks emerge from rural and isolated areas where victims will often die before help can reach them. In recent years, investigations in Sri Lanka, India and even the UK have revealed more heart-wrenching stories of women whose lives have been all but ended once they have been attacked. In the United Kingdom acid attacks have occurred in isolated incidents in places as diverse as Bristol, Swindon and Belfast [ASTI].