A woman looks at artwork called “Alphabetti Spaghetti” by British sculptor Alex Chinneck, one of a series of “knotted” postboxes, installed as part of a public art trail for Kensington & Chelsea Art Week on October 3, 2020. (Photo by Victoria Jones/PA Images 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)

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

Students receive a group punishment during a military-style close-order drill class at the Qide Education Center in Beijing February 19, 2014. The Qide Education Center is a military-style boot camp which offers treatment for internet addiction. As growing numbers of young people in China immerse themselves in the cyber world, spending hours playing games online, worried parents are increasingly turning to boot camps to crush addiction. Military-style boot camps, designed to wean young people off their addiction to the internet, number as many as 250 in China alone. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

An airplane house is pictured in the village of Miziara, northern Lebanon May 12, 2015. Miziara prides itself on building residential homes that resemble ancient Greek temples and Egyptian ruins, one is even built in the shape of an Airbus A380. (Photo by Aziz Taher/Reuters)

People arriving for Ladies day at the EBOR Festival at York Racecourse in Yorkshire, England on August 18 2022. (Photo by Matthew Lofthouse/South West News Service)

A stray puppy walks along abandoned train tracks near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017 near Chornobyl, Ukraine. An estimated 900 stray dogs live in the exclusion zone, many of them likely the descendants of dogs left behind following the mass evacuation of residents in the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Ben Green, of St. Augustine, flies into the pool on his inflatable alligator to find the hidden lizard at the bottom of the pool in the “Evading Arrest Obstacle Course” during the inaugural Florida Man Games, Saturday, February 24, 2024, at Francis Field in St. Augustine, Fla. (Photo by Corey Perrine/The Florida Times-Union via AP Photo)