In this Monday, June 20, 2016 photo, a Palestinian girl plays in a barrel as her mother bakes bread for a Ramadan dinner at their house in el-Zohor slum, on the outskirts of Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip. (Photo by Khalil Hamra/AP Photo)

Canadian soldiers from the Royal 22nd Regiment take up a position during a non-combative extraction operation in a simulated village as part of Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2016 exercise held at Camp Pendleton, California United States, July 11, 2016. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

A Colombian Nukak Maku Indian boy gestures in a refugee camp at Agua Bonita near San Jose del Guaviare of Guaviare province September 3, 2015. Since emerging from the jungle in 2005, half naked and carrying blowpipes, the Nukak have lived in settlements near the frontier town of San Jose del Guaviare, a humid outpost in the Amazon 400 km (250 miles) southeast of the capital Bogota. (Photo by John Vizcaino/Reuters)

Competitors take part in the Christmas Really Wild Mud Run on a 4.6 miles course across undulating farm land at Celtic Camping, St David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales, December 12, 2015. (Photo by Rebecca Naden/Reuters)

Palestinian mother Esma Zuhd cries after her children, Jahan and Ahmed Nasser who died after an Israeli attack at the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on December 29, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A baby of an internally displaced woman gets weighed during a doctor and nutritionist review to prevent malnutrition at a makeshift clinic in Ladan IDP camp, on the outskirts of Dollow, in Jubaland state, Somalia, 30 January 2024. (Photo by Daniel Irungu/EPA/EFE)

In this Tuesday, December 20, 2016 photo, Mohammad Ramzan, right, reacts while talking to The Associated Press with his young bride Saima in Jampur, Pakistan. Saima was given as a bride to the older man by her father so he could marry the groom’s sister, a practice of exchanging girls that is entrenched in conservative regions of Pakistan. It even has its own name in Urdu: Watta Satta, “give and take”. A mix of interests – family obligations, desire for sons, a wish to hand off a girl to a husband – can lead to a young teen in an a marriage she never sought. (Photo by K.M. Chaudhry/AP Photo)

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)