In this Friday, August. 17, 2018, photo, a North Korean waitress prepares to serve dinner to Chinese tourists at the Pegaebong hotel in Samjiyong in North Korea. Chinese businesspeople and tourists are once again flowing over the borders – several large tourist groups were in Samjiyon last week – and South Korean officials are seriously considering ways to help the North improve its roads and railways. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

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 November 2, 2018 photo, a voodoo believer who is supposed to be possessed with Gede spirit performs rituals near Baron Samedi's tomb during the annual Voodoo festival Fete Gede at Cite Soleil Cemetery in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As a proof that they got into trance and their bodies got possessed by Gedes, they drink and wash their faces, their eyes and even their genitals with a mixture of raw rum and hot chili peppers that, according to believers, could burn the skin of any human alive. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)

In this July 20, 2019 photo, children play during a sports event organized by members of the Caracas FC soccer club, in Catia, one of the poorest slums in Caracas, Venezuela. When the Caracas Football Club plays, its supporters leave their ideological preferences and socioeconomic differences behind, joining together to support and take care of each other inside and outside the stadium. (Photo by Matias Delacroix/AP Photo)

In this April 20, 2018, file aerial photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, advection fog drifts across skyscrapers on the waterfront in Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong Province. Chinese leaders have long been sensitive about their communist country’s international image. Now, they are battling back, investing in diplomacy and a courtship of hearts and minds, just as the United States digs in on the Trump administration’s “America First” mindset. (Photo by Lu Hui/Xinhua via AP Photo/File)

In this Tuesday January 21, 2014, file photo, slaughtered chickens are displayed for sale at a wholesale poultry market in Shanghai. The Chinese government on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, says a 41-year-old man has contracted what might be the w0orld’s first human case of the H10N3 strain of bird flu, but the risk of large-scale spread is low. (Photo by AP Photo/File)

In this January 23, 2021, file photo, a police officer detains a young woman during a protest against the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Pushkin square in Moscow, Russia. Allies of Navalny are calling for new protests next weekend to demand his release, following a wave of demonstrations across the country that brought out tens of thousands in a defiant challenge to President Vladimir Putin. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo/File)

In this photo provided by the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF), smokes and flames billow from vehicles in Hpruso township, Kayah state, Myanmar, Friday, December 24, 2021. Myanmar government troops rounded up villagers, some believed to be women and children, fatally shot more than 30 and set the bodies on fire, a witness and other reports said Saturday. (Photo by KNDF via AP Photo)