A 17-year-old girl from South Sudan has been auctioned as a bride on Facebook in what has been condemned as a “barbaric use of technology”.

Human rights campaigners fear that the auction, which netted 530 cows, three Toyota Land Cruisers and $10,000 for the girl’s parents, will tempt other families to use social media to try to improve their dowries.

Facebook deleted the auction but only after the teenager had been married off as the tenth wife of a wealthy businessman. George Otim, of the children’s rights charity Plan International, said: “This barbaric use of technology is reminiscent of latter-day slave markets. That a girl could be sold for marriage on the world’s biggest social networking site is beyond belief.”

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