Girls make a heart sign as the sun sets over the Mediterranean Sea coastline in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, July 14, 2023. (Photo by Hassan Ammar/AP Photo)

A woman holding a girl reacts after Israeli airstrikes hit Ridwan neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on October 23, 2023. (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A girl wears a cheongsam during a fashion show at a shopping mall in South Tangerang, Banten province, Indonesia on February 8, 2024. (Photo by Sulthony Hasanuddin/Antara Foto via Reuters)

5-year-old Chinese girl Wang Anna prepares meals for her grandmother and great-grandmother at home in Zhuyuan village, Guizhou province, China on March 3, 2017. Chinese girl called Wang Anna, 5, takes care of her ill grandmother and 92-year-old great-grandmother on her own every day in a mountainous village in Zhima town, Zunyi city, southwest China's Guizhou province. Her father went to jail before she was born and her mother remarried after gave birth to her. Although she is just five years old, she started to shoulder the responsibility to look after ill grandmother and elderly great-grandmother. (Photo by Imaginechina/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

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)

As part of FLAIR Melbourne – a Flinders Lane art festival – Melbourne’s Lisa Minogue presents stylised photographic portraits of Australian women of colour, their faces painted vibrantly to accentuate their individuality and encourage the viewer to study each face more closely. Minogue asked each woman the same question: “What do the words “coloured girl” mean to you?”. (Photo by Lisa Minogue/The Guardian)

A girl joins other novice nuns for a lunch at the Sathira-Dhammasathan Buddhist meditation centre in Bangkok April 21, 2013. A group of Thai girls are choosing to spend part of their school holidays as Buddhist nuns, down to having their heads shaven at the meditation centre. The centre, founded in 1987, is a learning community for peace and harmony that has programs open to people regardless of age and gender. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A girl with a ritual garland headdress smiles during a traditional Midsummer Night celebration, in the capital Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2020. Ukrainian girls believe the ages-old ceremony would help them to find their true love partners, as the pagan Slav festival is still celebrated in Ukraine, as Kyiv has lifted the coronavirus lockdown restrictions. (Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)