After Mukhtar Mai was gang raped in Pakistan in 2002, local tradition dictated that she was expected to commit suicide.

This article from CNN.com describes how, instead, Mai defied her attackers and fought for justice. More than 10 years later, she’s still fighting for women’s rights in Pakistan.

Mai’s “honor revenge” was carried out because her 12-year-old brother was wrongly accused of improper relations with a woman from another tribe.

She received threats that she would be killed if she went to a police station. But her community gave her the courage to fight back and go to court.

But while the majority of rapes go unreported in Pakistan, Mai was determined not to stay silent.

She says, “I decided that what happened to me should never happen to anyone else.”

Determined to fight for women’s rights, Mai set up the Mukhtar Mai Women’s Organization.

Convinced that lack of education contributed to the poor treatment of women, Mai established a girls’ school in a single room of her family home. It was the first school she had ever attended.

Her memoir, In the Name of Honor, has been translated into 23 languages.

Mai was the headline speaker at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy on February 19.

You can read the CNN article in its entirety here.