Inside Gucci and Madonna's Oscars 2025 afterparty – guest portraits on March 02, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. Pictured: American actress Olivia Wilde wearing Chloé. (Photo by JR)

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)

An artist airbrushes a model during the “World Bodypainting Festival 2017” in Klagenfurt, Austria on July 28, 2017. (Photo by Leonhard Foeger/Reuters)

Female Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters watch on as they release a bear into the wild in the Gara Mountains near the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk on March 4, 2018, after Iraqi Kurdish Animal rights activists from a local NGO rescued it from a private home. (Photo by Safin Hamed/AFP Photo)

A model presents a creation from the Fall/Winter 2017/18 collection by designer Lena Hoschek during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin, in Berlin, Germany, 17 January 2017. The Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin runs from 17 to 20 January. (Photo by Clemens Bilan/EPA)

A worker paints a santon, the typical figurines from Provence, at the Marcel Carbonel's Santon factory in Marseille, November 28, 2016. Santons are traditional hand-colored figurines usually set in Christmas Nativity scenes. (Photo by Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters)

TV host/blogger Louise Roe attends The Weinstein Company's Academy Awards viewing and after party in partnership with Grey Goose at TAO Los Angeles at TAO Hollywood on February 26, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images for The Weinstein Company)

Jason Bregartner and his son Jason Jr., 2, sit in costume with J.D. Mirable at a bustop during the NYC Zombie Crawl in New York, October 18, 2015. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)