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)

A mother raise her glass filled with 2017 Beaujolais Nouveau wine as she holds her child in a colored hot water “wine bath” at Hakone Kowakien Yunessun hot spring resort in Hakone, west of Tokyo, Japan, 16 November 2017, on the day of the Beaujolais Nouveau official release. With Germany and the United States, Japan is a major market for the Beaujolais Nouveau. (Photo by Franck Robichon/EPA/EFE)

A group of dust covered child labourers gather for a portrait in the brick kiln in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, 22 February 2015. Bleak photos identify the children working their fingers to the bone in Nepalís brick kilns. Photographer Jan Mˆller Hansen documented the conditions of the brick kilns in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal between 2013 and 2016 while he lived and worked in the area. Jan estimates between 150,000 and 175,000 people are employed in the 200 brick kilns littering the Kathmandu Valley. (Photo by Jan Moeller Hansen/Barcroft Images)

A mother prays for success for her child in the college entrance examinations at a Buddhist temple in Seoul, South Korea, November 12, 2015. About 630,000 students on Thursday sat for the annual exams that could lead them to one of the country's top universities. In South Korea, there is no higher achievement than to be accepted by a prestigious university. As a result, many students prepare for these entrance exams from an early age, often studying up to 16 hours a day for years to take this test. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A man stands next to the body of a migrant child washed up on a beach in Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016 after at least 37 migrants drowned when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece, Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency reported. The migrants, who included those from Myanmar, Afghanistan and Syria, set sail from the Canakkale province to reach the nearby Greek island of Lesbos, Anatolia said. (Photo by Ozan Kose/AFP Photo)

French sculptor Pierre Matter was born in 1964. “A mystical child, then a tormented teenager, he studied mathematics half-heartedly. It was only logical that he headed naturally, though initially in an erratic manner, for the mysterious universe of artistic creation. His slow progression in this field led him to try out many kinds of expression and material, from oil to gouache to ink, from comic strips to canvas, and also bas-relief in stone.”

Well before Corey Arnold ever thought about photography, he fished. As a child, he dressed as a fisherman for four consecutive Halloweens, and once brought a dead 3-foot Mako shark to school for show-and-tell. He knew he wanted to be a professional fisherman, even if he didn’t understand what that actually meant.

An Orthodox Christian child is baptized during Epiphany celebrations in the Jordan River January 19, 2012 at the Qasir al-Yahud baptismal site near Jericho, in the West Bank. Thousands of pilgrims gathered for the annual celebration at the site that the Eastern churches believes Jesus was baptised by John. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)