An Emirati child plays with an airplane model near the venue of the Mazayin Dhafra Camel Festival, on December 20, 2012 near the city of Madinat Zayed, 150 kms west of Abu Dhabi. The festival, which attracts participants from around the Gulf region, includes a camel beauty contest, a display of UAE handcrafts and other activities aimed at promoting the country's folklore. (Photo by Karim Sahib/AFP Photo)

A pair of ice climbers have been snapped in front of a stunning aurora. Mike Stuart and Takeshi Tani were climbing the Athabasca Glacier in Alberta, Canada, when the aurora lit up the nights sky. They were photographed by famed night-time photographer Paul Zizka, who specialises in photographing auroras in some of Canadas most beautiful parks. (Photo by Paul Zizka/Caters News)

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)

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)

Irish television personality and presenter Maura Higgins showed off her platinum hairdo on April 18, 2022 at the annual music and arts festival Coachella festival held at the Empire Polo Club in California. (Photo by Instagram)

Kat Von D attends her first solo art show “New American Beauty” at Sephora Antara store on March 1, 2012 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo by Victor Chavez/Getty Images For Sephora)

In an extraordinary act of devotion to his art, sculptural artist Spencer Byles spent a year creating beautiful sculptures out of natural and found materials throughout the unmanaged forests of La Colle Sur Loup (where he lived with his family), Villeneuve Loubet and Mougins. He worked together with elements of his natural surroundings to create artwork that blends seamlessly with the environment.