As the world marks the International Day of the Girl Child, women's rights activists point to progress on a wide array of issues but say more needs to be done to protect girls from child marriage, sexual assault and other forms of exploitation. Here is a selection of pictures showing the daily lives of girls across the globe, all taken by female Associated Press photojournalists. Here: In this December 14, 2015, file photo, a young clown rides in the back of a car following a procession to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Hundreds belonging to various clown associations made their annual pilgrimage to the Basilica to pay their respects to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

In this September 14, 2017 photo, young women pose for a photo inside their squatter building that used to house the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in the Mangueira slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Many lower-middle class Brazilians who gained ground during the boom years have since slid back closer to the poverty line. (Photo by Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

In this photo taken on Sunday, January 14, 2018, Anastasia Gruzdeva, left, poses for selfie with her friends as the temperature dropped to about –50 degrees (–58 degrees Fahrenheit) in Yakutsk, Russia. Temperatures in the remote, diamond-rich Russian region of Yakutia have dropped to near-record lows, plunging to –67 degrees Centigrade (-88.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas. (Photo by Sakhalife.ru Photo via AP Photo)

Women sing and dance as children gather in the background during the so-called parade of children's troops in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia, May 14, 2015. About 500 children aged from 4 to 10, members of youth military patriotic clubs, honor guards and paratroopers took part in the event, which was organized under the guidance of Commander of Southern Military District Colonel-General Alexander Galkin and was held to honor World War Two veterans and mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, according to local media. (Photo by Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

A combination picture shows Will Adam, 14, snowboarding down a street on Beacon Hill during a large winter blizzard in Boston, Massachusetts, United States January 27, 2015 (top), and a woman looking at her phone as she walks down the same street June 13, 2015. Outdoor scenes in Boston show local residents enjoying balmy weather amid lush greenery as the summer solstice approaches on 21 June. The very same locations suffered heavy snowstorms last winter, with snow ploughs, skiers and snowboarders battling the drifts. Boston got 275.8 cm of snow over the winter, the most since 1872, when records began. A few months after the snowstorms, Brian Snyder revisited the same places and shot pictures at exactly the same locations. (Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters)

In this August 3, 2015, photo, residents make their way through floodwaters in Minbu, Magway division, in Myanmar. The Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement said that more than 200,000 people are affected in 11 of the country's 14 states and divisions by flooding. In addition to damage to houses and farmland, infrastructure has been very badly hit, with roads and rail lines cut in many places and telecommunication links broken. (Photo by Hkun Lat/AP Photo)

A Nepalese mother applies make up to her daughter dressed as the living goddess Kumari as they wait for Kumari puja to start at Hanuman Dhoka temple, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, September 14, 2016. Girls under the age of nine gathered for the Kumari puja, a tradition of worshiping young prepubescent girls as manifestations of the divine female energy. The ritual holds a strong religious significance in the Newar community that seeks divine blessings to save small girls from diseases and bad luck in the years to come. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

In this Friday, February 5, 2016 picture, Egyptian farmer Ahmed Ayman, 14, rides his trained donkey as he jumps over a barrier in the Nile Delta village of Al-Arid about 150 kilometers north of Cairo, Egypt. He discovered the donkey's talent after she jumped over a small irrigation canal. (Photo by Amr Nabil/AP Photo)