KABUL
\nAfghan women\u2019s rights activists opened a library in Kabul on Wednesday, hoping to provide an oasis for women increasingly cut off from education and public life under the ruling Taliban.
\nSince taking over Afghanistan a year ago, the Islamist Taliban have said women should not leave the home without a male relative and must cover their faces, though some women in urban centres ignore the rule.
\nSecondary schools for girls largely remain closed after the Taliban went back on promises to open them in March.
\nAccording to Reuters, Afghan women\u2019s rights activists opened a library in Kabul on Wednesday, hoping to provide an oasis for women increasingly cut off from education and public life under the ruling Taliban.
\nSince taking over Afghanistan a year ago, the Islamist Taliban have said women should not leave the home without a male relative and must cover their faces, though some women in urban centres ignore the rule.
\nSecondary schools for girls largely remain closed after the Taliban went back on promises to open them in March.
\nAdvertisement says, \u201cWe have opened the library with two purposes: one, for those girls who cannot go to school and second, for those women who lost their jobs and have nothing to do,\u201d said Zhulia Parsi, one of the library\u2019s founders.
\nA Taliban spokesman did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
\nThe library\u2019s more than 1,000 books includes novels and picture books as well non-fiction titles on politics, economics and science. The books were mostly donated by teachers, poets and authors to the Crystal Bayat Foundation, an Afghan women\u2019s rights organisation which helped set up the library.
\nSeveral women\u2019s activists who have taken part in protests in recent months also helped establish the library in a rented shop in a mall that has a number of stores catering to women.
\nIn March, the Taliban made a U-turn on a promise to open girls\u2019 high schools. Most teenage girls now have no access to classrooms and thousands of women have been pushed out of the workforce due to the growing restrictions and Afghanistan\u2019s economic crisis, international development agencies say.
\nThe Taliban say they respect women\u2019s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law and that since March they have been working on a way of opening girls\u2019 high schools.
\nWestern governments have stepped up their condemnation of the Taliban\u2019s widening elimination of women from public life. Many Afghan women have expressed frustration and called for Taliban authorities to respect their rights.
\n\u201cThey can\u2019t annihilate us from society, if they annihilate us from one field, we will continue from another field,\u201d Mahjoba Habibi, a women\u2019s rights advocate, said at the library\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KABUL Afghan women\u2019s rights activists opened a library in Kabul on Wednesday, hoping to provide an oasis for women increasingly cut off from education and public life under the ruling Taliban. Since taking over Afghanistan a year ago, the Islamist Taliban have said women should not leave the home without a male relative and must […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-279571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n