A “Maya” girl sits in an altar during the traditional celebration of “Las Mayas” on the streets in Colmenar Viejo, near Madrid, Spain, Friday, May 2, 2014. The festivity of the Maya comes from pagan rites and dates from the medieval age, appearing in ancient documents, it takes place every year in the beginning of May and celebrates the beginning off the spring. A girl between 7 and 11years is chosen as “Maya” and should sit still, serious, and quiet for a couple of hours in an altar on the street decorated with flowers and plants, afterwards they walk to the church with their family where they attend a ceremony. (Photo by Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP Photo)

As part of FLAIR Melbourne – a Flinders Lane art festival – Melbourne’s Lisa Minogue presents stylised photographic portraits of Australian women of colour, their faces painted vibrantly to accentuate their individuality and encourage the viewer to study each face more closely. Minogue asked each woman the same question: “What do the words “coloured girl” mean to you?”. (Photo by Lisa Minogue/The Guardian)

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)

5-year-old Chinese girl Wang Anna prepares meals for her grandmother and great-grandmother at home in Zhuyuan village, Guizhou province, China on March 3, 2017. Chinese girl called Wang Anna, 5, takes care of her ill grandmother and 92-year-old great-grandmother on her own every day in a mountainous village in Zhima town, Zunyi city, southwest China's Guizhou province. Her father went to jail before she was born and her mother remarried after gave birth to her. Although she is just five years old, she started to shoulder the responsibility to look after ill grandmother and elderly great-grandmother. (Photo by Imaginechina/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

To draw the public's attention to a new line of bathing suits, a Tokyo department store used live models to show off the suits on June 5, 1950. The rain didn't bother the curious, and both the girls and the crowd seemed to like the idea of staring at each other through the glass. (Photo by AP Photo via The Atlantic)

Nasoin Akhter, 15, has her makeup done at a beauty parlor on the day of her wedding to a 32-year-old man, August 20, 2015, in Manikganj, Bangladesh. In June of this year, Human Rights Watch released a damning report about child marriage in Bangladesh. The country has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, with 29% of girls marrying before the age of 15, and 65% of girls marrying before they turn 18. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

Mercedes Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain sprays champagne at a grid girl as he celebrates his victory on the podium after the Chinese F1 Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit, April 12, 2015. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Ramela Meseljevic, a 7 year-old girl born without both of her hands and one of her legs shorter than the other, writes during classes in the her school in Begov Han, Bosnia and Herzegovina December 2, 2015. International Day of Disabled Persons is observed on December 3 with the theme "Inclusion matters: access and empowerment of people of all abilities". (Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters)