PARIS, France (AFP) — People around the world marked International Women’s Day Friday with protests and celebrations.

Some countries marked the day by voting on — or confirming — groundbreaking legislation, while the failure of others to pass reforms on key issues such as abortion rights was the focus of some of Friday’s protests.

In Afghanistan, small groups of women staged rare demonstrations in private spaces, after a crackdown by Taliban authorities forced activists off the streets.

A handful of women in several provinces gathered to demand restrictions on jobs, travel and education be lifted, said activists from the Purple Saturdays group.

Hundreds of women rallied in major cities in Pakistan to highlight street harassment, bonded labor and the lack of female representation in parliament.

“We face all sorts of violence: physical, sexual, cultural violence where women are exchanged to settle disputes, child marriages, rape, harassment in the workplace, on the streets,” said Farzana Bari, lead organizer of the Islamabad event.

Irish voters took part in a double referendum on proposals to modernize its constitution, which could expand the definition of family from those founded on marriage to “durable relationships.”

Another proposed change would replace old-fashioned language around a mother’s “duties in the home” with a clause recognizing care provided by family members.

Thousands of people marched in Rome and Milan in Italy calling for an end to violence against women following a number of high-profile cases of young women murdered by their boyfriends.

Jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi denounced the regimes in Iran and Afghanistan for having “systematically... orchestrated conditions of suppression, domination, tyranny (and) discrimination against women.”

Six Japanese couples marked International Women’s Day in Tokyo by suing the government for the right to use different surnames after marriage. Under laws in place since the 19th century, married couples must choose the husband’s or the wife’s name, and about 95 percent take the man’s, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

In the Kosovo capital of Pristina, women marched in a rally for to press for gender equality and to protest violence against women.

A group of Jewish women held a march in South Africa to denounce the government’s silence regarding abuse by Hamas fighters against Israeli hostages.

Thousands of women angry at the failure of the ruling liberal alliance to move quickly on a reform of the abortion laws took to the streets of Warsaw, Poland.