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)

In this September 14, 2017 photo, young women pose for a photo inside their squatter building that used to house the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in the Mangueira slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Many lower-middle class Brazilians who gained ground during the boom years have since slid back closer to the poverty line. (Photo by Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

In this photo taken on Saturday, April 22, 2017, a drawing “King for a day” is made on the back of a muddy truck by artist Nikita Golubev in Moscow, Russia. The grimy trucks traversing the polluted and dusty streets of Moscow have inspired Golubev to use white vans and trucks as his canvas to create this ephemeral street art and signs his drawings Pro Boy Nick. (Photo by Pavel Golovkin/AP Photo)

Visitors look at photographs in the exhibition “Lisette Model Street Life e Horst P. Horst Syle and Glamour” at the art gallery “Camera – Centro Italiano per la fotografia” in Turin, Italy, 27 April 2021. Culture venues reopened to the public as several Italian region are back to COVID-19 yellow zone in the country's tier system. (Photo by Alessandro di Marco/EPA/EFE)

Drinkers leave the bars as police patrol in Soho, in central London on September 24, 2020 as the clock nears 10pm, on the first day of the new earlier closing times for pubs and bars in England and Wales, introduced to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Britain has tightened restrictions to stem a surge of coronavirus cases, ordering pubs to close early and advising people to go back to working from home to prevent a second national lockdown. (Photo by Tolga Akmen/AFP Photo)

A member of Wagner group stands guard in a street in the city of Rostov-on-Don, on June 24, 2023. President Vladimir Putin on June 24, 2023 said an armed mutiny by Wagner mercenaries was a “stab in the back” and that the group's chief Yevgeny Prigozhin had betrayed Russia, as he vowed to punish the dissidents. Prigozhin said his fighters control key military sites in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

The picture dated September 3, 2023 shows a battle reenactment at the Crosby Victory Show in Leicestershire. It is the largest World War Two re-enactment weekend of its kind in the UK and around 15,000 visitors attended over the three-day even. Visitors stepped back in time as the farmland was transformed to recreate life during the war, with trenches, armoured vehicles and WW2 aircraft displays, including the Avro Lancaster and Douglas Dakota. (Photo by Claire Hartley/Bav Media)

This Thursday, June 29, 2023, image provided by Virgin Galactic shows the Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered spaceplane during a research flight before gliding back down to Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. With the research flight complete, Virgin Galactic plans to begin commercial flights with paying ticket holders in August. (Photo by Virgin Galactic via AP Photo)