Women in Pathein, Myanmar, construct in the last decade of August 2024 parasols that they will paint in vibrant colours to sell in nearby markets. (Photo by Nantapon Pattamakijsakul/Solent News)

Children play near an apartment complex on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar on July 29, 2019. (Photo by Sai Aung Main/AFP Photo)

A vendor prepares her stall as she waits for customer at a street market in Taunggyi, Myanmar's northeast Shan Sate on November 13, 2024. (Photo by Sai Aung Main/AFP Photo)

Buddhist nuns watch a parade during a Novitiation Ceremony at the Hlegu Township in Yangon on March 15, 2025. (Photo by Sai Aung Main/AFP Photo)

Arisha, 9, takes instructions from coach Younus Qambrani during an exercise session at the first women's boxing coaching camp in Karachi, Pakistan February 19, 2016. For the past six months about a dozen girls, aged 8 to 17, have gone to the Pak Shine Boxing Club after school to practice their jabs, hooks and upper cuts. (Photo by Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)

In this January 24, 2017 photo, boxer Idamerys Moreno wraps a bandage on her hand before a training session at a sports center in Havana, Cuba. Boxing has long been an athletic engine for Cuba, which has won 72 Olympic medals in that category but women are not allowed to box. (Photo by Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

A traffic policeman hides a rose behind his back before giving it to a female driver ahead of International Women's Day in Ryazan, Russia on March 7, 2017. (Photo by Alexander Ryumin/TASS via Getty Images)

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)