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)

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)

A Ka'apor Indian warrior (L) chases a logger who tried to escape after they captured him during a jungle expedition to search for and expel loggers from the Alto Turiacu Indian territory, near the Centro do Guilherme municipality in the northeast of Maranhao state in the Amazon basin, August 7, 2014. Tired of what they say is a lack of sufficient government assistance in keeping loggers off their land, the Ka'apor Indians, who along with four other tribes are the legal inhabitants and caretakers of the territory, have sent their warriors out to expel all loggers they find and set up monitoring camps in the areas that are being illegally exploited. (Photo by Lunae Parracho/Reuters)

Female Afghan National Police (ANP) officers aim their weapons during a drill at a training centre near the German Bundeswehr army camp Marmal in Mazar-e-Sharif, northern Afghanistan on December 11, 2012. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters/File Photo)

A Kurdish fighter from the People's Protection Units (YPG) fires his rifle at Islamic State militants as he runs across a street in Raqqa, Syria, July 2017. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A Russia-backed rebel looks at the flag covered body of an Ukrainian serviceman in Debaltseve, Ukraine, February 20, 2015. The struggle for the strategic rail hub, Debaltseve, a sleepy town with a pre-war population of 25,000 people, left the town in ruins and became one of the darkest pages in the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has already killed more than 6,000 people. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo/File)

A slogan and crosses are painted on the helmet of a Ukrainian serviceman in Ruska Lozova, a village retaken by the Ukrainian forces, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine on May 16, 2022. (Photo by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)