An Ethnic Kayan also know as a Long Neck girl sits at her parents souvenir shop in the Kayan village at the northern province of Chiang Rai, Thailand, July 16, 2018. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

A girl plays with her pet goats at a village some 200 kilometers away from Kolkata, in Tumpa Mondal, India on July 21, 2019. (Photo by Tumpa Mondal/Xinhua News Agency/Barcroft Media)

A girl shoots a gun armed with blanks at an weapon exhibition during a military show in St.Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, October 14, 2017. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A girl in a swimsuit participates in the BoogelWoogel alpine carnival at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort in Krasnaya Polyana, Sochi, Russia on March 31, 2018. (Photo by Artur Lebedev/TASS)

A girl with white powder on her face celebrates the Songkran holiday which marks the Thai New Year in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 14, 2024. (Photo by Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters)

A girl plays a jump rope game at a school housing residents displaced by gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, May 15, 2024. (Photo by Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

A little girl rubs her tired eyes during the first day at the lyceum named after Moldovan writer Gheorghe Asachi in Chisinau on September 2, 2024. (Photo by Dumitru Doru/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

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)