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)

Miss Lovely Legs competition at the Pick 'n Pay hypermarket in Boksburg, South Africa, 1980. (Photo by David Goldblatt/Museum of Contemporary Art Australia)

Participants gather during a traditional hunting contest, involving tamed golden eagles and hawks, in Almaty, Kazakhstan on December 1, 2018. (Photo by Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters)

A woman peels potatoes for sale at a market located along a railway line in West Jakarta, Indonesia March 1, 2016. (Photo by Garry Lotulung/Reuters)

Astronomer, space scientist and meteorologist Andrea Opitz, senior research associate of the Space Physics and Space Technology Department of Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) Wigner Research Centre for Physics (2R) wears a space suit during a cosmology exhibition in Budapest, Hungary, 03 March 2016. The photo series was created to mark the International Women's Day (IWD), which was marked for the first time in 1911 and is celebrated on 08 March since 1913. (Photo by Bea Kallos/EPA)

A boy collects drinking water from a hand pump in Kutubdia, Bangladesh on March 30, 2016. Kutubdia is one of many islands affected by some of the fastest recorded sea-level rises in the world. The island has halved in size in 20 years. (Photo by SIipa/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A containment shelter for the damaged fourth reactor (L) and the New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure (R) at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant are seen from Ukraine's abandoned town of Pripyat, Ukraine, April 22, 2016. (Photo by Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

A woman watches the St. Patrick's day parade in Dublin, Ireland on March 17, 2017. St. Patrick's Day is marked annually on 17 March to commemorate Saint Patrick, a patron saint of Ireland. (Photo by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)