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Today is the International Day of the Girl Child. It is a U.N. event with a grand name and a powerful mission. Girls around the world, especially in lower-income countries, often face terrible things, from genital mutilation to child marriage to kidnapping. We asked five photographers, who devote much or all of their time to documenting the lives of global girls, to share photos with special significance and talk about the images.

Meeri Koutaniemi

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Isina and Naserian, both 14, await circumcision, heads shaved as part of the ritual. "It was so much more violent and brutal than I had thought," says Koutaniemi, who made the picture in Kenya this year. Courtesy of Meeri Koutaniemi hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Meeri Koutaniemi

Isina and Naserian, both 14, await circumcision, heads shaved as part of the ritual. "It was so much more violent and brutal than I had thought," says Koutaniemi, who made the picture in Kenya this year.

Courtesy of Meeri Koutaniemi

Finnish photojournalist Meeri Koutaniemi first went to document female genital mutilation in Kenya in 2012, working with a Finnish film director at a safe house for girls who'd fled their families to escape circumcision or child marriage. "I felt really weak and sad," she says. "I was thinking I didn't even get any pictures."

"It made an unstoppable impact on me and a desire to continue," she says of that experience. "I was a little bit shocked that this is quite a huge human rights violation toward girls and women, and I wondered why we were not talking about it more." And then I started to think, how could I continue? So, I decided I have to make a book."

Mariella Furrer

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Sheldean Human of Pretoria, South Africa, was seven when she was murdered, then raped, by a stranger in 2007. Furrer photographed her schoolmates: "These two girls represent a situation of incredible pain and loss but they are just so dignified. It breaks my heart." Courtesy of Mariella Furrer hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Mariella Furrer

Sheldean Human of Pretoria, South Africa, was seven when she was murdered, then raped, by a stranger in 2007. Furrer photographed her schoolmates: "These two girls represent a situation of incredible pain and loss but they are just so dignified. It breaks my heart."

Courtesy of Mariella Furrer

In 2002, Beirut-born photographer Mariella Furrer got a three-day assignment from an American women's magazine to shoot a story on infant rape in Johannesburg. When she got to the child protection unit, she couldn't believe what she saw. "I was shocked how many children were brought in," she says.

Furrer herself had been sexually abused as a child but kept silent until her 20s. A decade after that assignment, Furrer is still giving voice to the victims. "Although I can't change what happened to these girls," she says, "I do my best to try to make a difference."

Glenna Gordon

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Gordon arranged the photos of some of the kidnapped girls, provided by their families. Top row left to right: Yana Pogu, Rhoda Peters, Saratu Ayuba, Comfort, Bullus, Dorcas Yakubu. Bottom row left to right: Hauwa Mutah, Hajara Isa, Rivkatu Ngalang.'

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Courtesy of Glenna Gordon

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Of all her photos, Gordon was most attached to the images of 16-year-old Dorcas's notebook: "The Eiffel tower is on front. I don't even know if she knew what the Efifel tower is."

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Courtesy of Glenna Gordon

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The hearts in her notebook touched Gordon deeply. "Those hearts show she's such a little girl. I drew hearts in my notebook. I still draw hearts. That made her really human to me."

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Courtesy of Glenna Gordon

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"Dorcas and this boy must have been exchanging notes, and she copied the notes in her notebook," Gordon says. "It starts soft and gets more emotional and serious. My favorite line is when he says, 'Hi the remote control of my life. I'm now feeling so much of happiness in my heart.'"

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Courtesy of Glenna Gordon

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A documentary photographer based in New York, Glenna Gordon was on assignment in Nigeria when news broke about #BringBackOurGirls, the online campaign urging the rescue of nearly 300 Nigerian girls abducted from school by the extremist Muslim group Boko Haram. She dropped her plans and left for the town of Chibok, where protests on behalf of the girls were taking place. She wanted to take pictures ... but of what? She began collecting the girls' personal belongings to photograph, aided by Sunday Samuels, a pastor's son whose three cousins were among the kidnapped.

"The girls are missing," she says. "They're missing from my photos, too." And though she photographed only objects, she says it was an emotionally draining assignment. She grew protective of the items. When she had to switch hotels rooms, the hotel manager offered to move her things: "I was like, 'Do not touch my stuff!'"

Stephanie Sinclair

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Nine months pregnant, Niruta, who is 14, arrives at her wedding in Kagati Village, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal on Jan. 23, 2007. Niruta moved in with the family of her 17-year-old husband-to-be and became pregnant when they were engaged — considered acceptable in her society. Stephanie Sinclair hide caption

itoggle caption Stephanie Sinclair

Nine months pregnant, Niruta, who is 14, arrives at her wedding in Kagati Village, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal on Jan. 23, 2007. Niruta moved in with the family of her 17-year-old husband-to-be and became pregnant when they were engaged — considered acceptable in her society.

Stephanie Sinclair

For over a decade, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Stephanie Sinclair has turned her lens on child brides. Her image is featured on the Day of the Girl website. "I don't see them as pictures," she says. "I see them as the girls they are, and I carry them around with me every day."

She sees cultural differences in the practice of child marriage in different countries. But there is one similarity. "Girls are always taken out of schools because they're giving birth right away. The girls are commonly very young, their bodies are just not prepared for childbirth. Maternal mortality rates are high. Infant mortality rates are high. The girls aren't even taking folic acid. Of course they're not! Girls can have ruptured uteruses. It is a real physical issue in addition to being a human rights issue."

She plans to continue her work: "I keep going back because I know how important this is."

Lynsey Addario

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Mamma Sessay died as she was delivering twins in this 2010 photograph. The Sierra Leonean wanted to study and earn a degree but at 14 was forced into marriage. /Lynsey Addario hide caption

itoggle caption /Lynsey Addario

Mamma Sessay died as she was delivering twins in this 2010 photograph. The Sierra Leonean wanted to study and earn a degree but at 14 was forced into marriage.

/Lynsey Addario

You may have seen photographs by American-born, London-based Lynsey Addario on the front page of the New York Times or featured in National Geographic. And you may have seen her own face in newspapers and magazines as well. Addario has been kidnapped on the job twice, in 2004 and again in 2011, when she was among a group of journalists held hostage in Libya.

Her goal is to tell the stories of civilians affected by war, focusing on women and girls, whose voices are often harder to hear. When she is not covering a war, she wanders with her camera, documenting the ramifications of childbirth on girls whose bodies are not of an age to bear children.

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Sometimes you can tell a lot about a country just by walking its beaches. That's what I did on my last day in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, where I was on assignment covering the Ebola epidemic.

Standing at water's edge, facing the sea. The smooth blue rollers come splashing in, steady, hypnotic — like oceans anywhere in the world.

But turn around and face the city and you're smacked by a shoreline fouled with plastic bottles and spray cans and yellow sewage. To the right, tangled in the brown seaweed, lies the stiff bloated corpse of a dead dog. Beyond, across the boulevard, is the gray cement skeleton of an abandoned building project.

Alie A. Koroma struggles over the sand on his metal crutches to talk to me. He has time to wander the beach. He's out of work. Akuroma tells me he used to cater to foreign tourists.

"We used to take them [on] excursions on the islands, we have beaches."

That's over now, he says, "because of the Ebola."

Further down the beach I meet four beaming girls. They look to be about 9 or 10 years old. One balances a small plastic tub on top of her head and in it is a collection of beach bounty, including a headless naked Barbie. The kids have also managed to grab some wildlife from the surf.

"Is fish. I find a fish," one tells me.

We chat for a bit as they show me their haul. They ask me my name, then dance down the sand, giggling as they go.

All the seaside restaurants and nightclubs and boutiques are shuttered because of the Ebola emergency. But an outdoor fitness club, a kind of Muscle Beach Freetown, is open.

Under the palm trees there are thick rusted barbells and a wooden bench press sitting in the sand. Four pairs of breathless young women are running through self-defense drills.

It turns out they are rehearsing for an anti-drug movie called Gunshot.

Shouting commands to the women is a hulking presence in a tight blue polo shirt: master trainer Ansumana Bangura.

"This is an action movie," he tells me, "So they are training to get their physical fitness so that we got a very good thing when they're shooting."

Bangura says Gunshot tells the story of someone who's working to prevent drug use among young people and fighting corrupt government officials.

One of the actors he's instructing is a petite 22-year-old named Frances Nicol. She'd love it if her fight scenes in Gunshot lead to a starring role.

"It actually depends on the director. We don't know what the director has for us. But somehow it's an action movie so we're getting ourselves prepared beforehand."

And so even in Sierra Leone in the midst of the devastating Ebola epidemic, a young actor can still hope for her big break.

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Tomorrow marks the third International Day of the Girl Child, designated by the U.N. to highlight the need to create a better world for adolescent girls.

It's a day when activists ramp up efforts to make the public aware of issues like child marriage, violence against girls and the lack of access to education. It's also a time for activists to push world leaders to make commitments — financial or policy-wise — to end those problems.

But these days, it seems like every other day is the International Day of this, that or the other thing. In October alone, the U.N. has designated 13 days to celebrate teachers, the eradication of poverty, even the U.N. itself.

It makes you wonder: How effective are these commemorative days? Goats and Soda asked a few scholars who specialize in global issues. Their answers were decidedly mixed.

Commemorative days have their defenders. Activists single out an issue for the public, government and private donors to focus on. "It forces a lot of governments and agencies to comment on a certain issue," says Casey Dunning, a policy analyst at the D.C.-based think tank Center for Global Development.

And it's more than just comments.

Five Things You May Not Know About Child Marriage Dec. 1, 2013

A few years back, the challenges of girls weren't even on the agenda of world leaders, much less on the minds of the average person. The first Day of the Girl, in 2012, changed that. It focused on ending child marriage, enabling activists to bring the issue to the fore, says Lyric Thompson, a senior policy manager at the International Center for Research on Women.

That year, the U.S. State Department included child marriage in the annual Human Rights Report, putting pressure on countries to end the practice. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also announced a slew of initiatives, including tackling child marriage in Bangladesh, where rates are among the highest in the world.

Between the U.S. government and private donors, Thompson says, roughly $100 million was pledged to those initiatives.

So the day led to new commitments to help girls. But you can't prove that the day itself had any impact on the ground, says Daniel Esser, an American University professor who does research on the effectiveness of international aid.

"My concern is they don't serve the people they're intended to serve, but the agencies that invent and popularize them," he says. So the benefit may turn out to be bigger budgets and staff along with more political leverage for those agencies.

Goats and Soda

UNICEF Report On Female Genital Mutilation Holds Hope And Woe

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That's good for the agencies, but what about the girls?

Esser points to a 2013 study that asked whether money that the United Kingdom invested in global development groups led to greater impact on the ground. The results, he says, are "sobering."

The British government rated the impact of agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Development Fund for Women as "poor." The World Health Organization and the United Nations Population Fund received an "adequate" score.

So does that means we should do away with dedicated days?

Dunning says you can't expect one day to spark a revolution. But that doesn't mean it's not an effective way to raise awareness.

"It plants a seed," says Thompson. "And if we're lucky, that seed's going to wiggle and grow."

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On the second story of the municipal palace in Iguala, Mexico, Mayor Jose Luis Abarca occupied the large corner office. His wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, head of the city's family welfare department, occupied the one right next door. From there, residents say, the two ruthlessly ruled over this city of 150,000 in the southern state of Guerrero. A national newspaper dubbed the duo the "imperial couple."

But on Sept. 30, their reign ended. The mayor, with his wife by his side, asked the city council for a leave of absence. Neither has been seen since.

That happened four days after 43 university students disappeared after a confrontation with police in Iguala. Twenty-eight bodies — thought to be some of the missing students — were discovered in a nearby mass grave a week ago. More mass graves were discovered Friday.

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Dubbed the "imperial couple" by a Mexican newspaper, the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda are wanted for questioning in the case of the missing students and the mass graves found near Iguala. They are shown here in a photo taken in May. Alejandrino Gonzalez/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Alejandrino Gonzalez/AP

Dubbed the "imperial couple" by a Mexican newspaper, the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda are wanted for questioning in the case of the missing students and the mass graves found near Iguala. They are shown here in a photo taken in May.

Alejandrino Gonzalez/AP

The case highlights the corruption and collusion between politicians and drug traffickers in many parts of rural Mexico today.

Residents say Iguala changed under the current Mayor Abarca's tenure.

"Crime has been terrible since Jose Luis Abarca took over," says Claudia Guitierrez, a 20-year-old law student. "Iguala was never like this before."

These days Mexico's new paramilitary gendarmerie patrols Iguala's streets. Twenty-two local cops are under arrest, four are fugitives, and the remainder of the force was relieved of duty.

Authorities say that on Sept. 26, officers shot at three buses of students from a poor, rural teaching college who had come into town soliciting donations. After the shooting, with six people dead, the local cops were seen corralling the surviving students into patrol cars. Reportedly some of the officers confessed to turning the students over to a local drug gang, which later killed them.

Authorities say they don't have a motive yet, but focus has centered on Iguala's mayor and his wife, who have well-known connections to traffickers.

Iguala's First Family's Open Secret

Sergio Fajardo Carillo owns a local radio station in Iguala. He says the mayoral family's connection to drug traffickers was an open secret in the town — and throughout the state.

Three brothers of Pineda, the mayor's wife, were lieutenants in the ruthless Beltran-Leyva organized crime gang, according to prosecutors and the family's own statements. Two were killed in a shootout with rivals five years ago, according to news reports.

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A third, Alberto "The Eraser" Pineda, was released from prison last year and is allegedly the head of the Guerreros Unidos gang — an offshoot from the once-powerful Beltran organization — that is attempting to take over Iguala. National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido says the cartel, which has been implicated in the students' disappearance, specializes in the transport of marijuana and heroin to Chicago.

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Clandestine graves are seen near Iguala on Monday. State officials have been unable so far to determine whether the 28 bodies found in the graves are of the students who were attacked by local police. Eduardo Verdugo/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Eduardo Verdugo/AP

Clandestine graves are seen near Iguala on Monday. State officials have been unable so far to determine whether the 28 bodies found in the graves are of the students who were attacked by local police.

Eduardo Verdugo/AP

In a video released this week, the mayor's own mother-in-law says he was on the drug gang's payroll, receiving $155,000 a month, to give the crime organization carte blanche over the city.

Few appeared to complain — Iguala's streets were paved and the budget was in the black for the first time in years.

The mayor, as in many towns throughout this troubled region of Mexico, was able to enrich himself and family members, collude with gangs and use the local police force to maintain control, according to prosecutors, rivals and even members of his own political party — including one who publicly accused the mayor of murdering her husband.

Iguala City Councilwoman Sofia Mendoza says it was the mayor who shot her husband, Arturo Hernandez, a local community organizer, last year. He and the mayor had been longtime political rivals and argued publicly at a city council meeting the day before Hernandez was killed.

She says a witness, who saw the mayor shoot her husband in the head, even gave a statement to state prosecutors, but they did nothing.

Drug Cartel Boss Dies A Second Time

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"This man had so much power, there was little I could do, I just had to take it," says Mendoza. "I couldn't bear to look at him anymore."

Abarca, the mayor, took away Mendoza's office. She holds meetings with local constituents at a plastic table on the street behind city hall.

'Embarrassment For The President'

The revelations of local corruption and crime in Guerrero have embarrassed the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

His attorney general called international journalists to a meeting earlier this week at his office to discuss the case. Jesus Murillo Karam defended his decision not to investigate Iguala's leaders earlier.

"Look, if your cousin commits a crime, that doesn't mean I can investigate you, even if it's your brother," Murillo said. "I need evidence, not suspicions."

Murillo said he knew about the murder accusations against the mayor, but homicides, he said, fall under state jurisdiction, not federal officials.

Mendoza, the Iguala city councilwoman, says authorities should have done more.

"If they had paid attention to me and what happened to my husband," she says, "this all could have been avoided."

Authorities are searching for the mayor, his wife and Iguala's police chief — who are all wanted for questioning — and for the still-missing students.

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