Kyrgyz girls pose in traditional costumes during the Nowruz celebration in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 20 March 2024. Nowruz is the Persian New Year celebrated by various ethnic groups worldwide and it traditionally marks the first day of spring. (Photo by Igor Kovalenko/EPA/EFE)

A girl visits by an area decorated with lanterns ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year festivity at Yu Garden, following the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in Shanghai, China, January 28, 2022. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

A girl, named Tata and aged 8, wears a Red Army uniform-styled dress during the celebrations of Victory Day, which marks the 78th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Moscow, Russia on May 9, 2023. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

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)

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)

Four-month-old fox cubs squaring up to each other in Walthamstow, England on August 7, 2015. (Photo by Greg Morgan/Barcroft Media)

The nearly four-week-old Tapir cub bathes on June 28, 2016 in Gondwanaland at the zoo in Leipzig, Saxony. (Photo by Jan Woitas/DPA)