Countries around the world recognized International Women's Day on Sunday, with some marking it as a national holiday.

In Russia, where International Women's Day is a holiday, men were streaming into flower markets and florists around the country to buy bouquets for the women in their lives.

International Women's Day was declared in 1910 by the German socialist leader Clara Zetkin at a conference in Copenhagen as a day of solidarity, and marked the fight of women for equal rights.

The day was officially recognized by the United Nations in 1975, the International Women's Year.

In Italy, Pope Benedict XVI told a Vatican crowd that he had been reflecting on the condition of women and praying that they can live with respect and dignity.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai spoke at a gymnasium full of Afghan women to commemorate the day.

The International Committee of the Red Cross drew attention on Sunday to the dangers women face in war zones, among other places.

Every year, more than half a million women die of pregnancy or childbirth complications because they can't get to a health facility, and the highest rates of maternal deaths occurred in 10 countries that are either at war or recently at war. The 10 war-torn countries that pose the highest risk for women include Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Red Cross said.

Some of the worst horrors facing women are in eastern Congo, where for every rape reported 10 to 20 go unreported, the United Nations reported.

In Canada, Assembly of First Nations leaders acknowledged in a release the UN's 2009 global theme to end violence against women and voiced support for the call by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women to "urgently carry out thorough investigations" of the more than 500 cases of missing or slain aboriginal women.

With files from the Associated Press and the Canadian Press