Company failed to remove post that informed users of auction of 17-year-old girl for several days

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Facebook has been criticised for failing to remove a viral post promoting an auction of a child bride in South Sudan, which eventually led to the payment of the largest dowry ever recorded in the civil war-torn country.

The highest bidder was a man three times the age of the 17-year-old girl who was auctioned. At least four other men in Eastern Lakes state competed, including the region’s deputy governor, said Philips Anyang Ngong, a human rights lawyer who tried to stop the bidding last month.

“She has been reduced to a mere commodity,” Ngong told the Associated Press, calling it “the biggest test of child abuse, trafficking and auctioning of a human being”. Everyone involved should be held accountable, he said.

The girl, named as Nyalong by AP, became the man’s ninth wife. Photos posted on Facebook show her sitting beside the groom, wearing a lavish dress and staring at the floor.

The groom, who did not respond to requests for comment, paid a final price of 500 cows, two luxury cars, $10,000, two bikes, a boat and some mobile phones.

The bidding war caused local and international outrage.

The auction was advertised but not carried out on the site, but it took several days for Facebook to remove the post that first promoted the auction. After it was taken down, other posts “glorifying” the auction remained, said George Otim, country director for Plan International South Sudan.

“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 in this day and age is beyond belief,” he said.

Facebook did not reply to a request for comment.

South Sudan has a deeply rooted cultural practice of paying dowries for brides, usually in the form of cows. It also has a long history of child marriage. Even though that practice is now illegal, 40% of girls still marry before the age 18, according to the United Nations Population Fund. The practice “threatens girls’ lives” and limits prospects for their future, said Dr Mary Otieno, the agency’s country representative.

While South Sudan’s government condemns the practice of child marriage it says it can’t regulate communities’ cultural norms, especially in remote areas.

“You can’t call it bidding as if it was an auction. It’s not bidding. If you see it with European eyes you’ll call it an auction,” government spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny told the AP. “You have to see it with an African eye, as it’s a tradition that goes back thousands of years. There’s no word for it in English.”

Some local lawmakers and activists disagree. In a statement released this week, the national alliance for women lawyers in South Sudan called upon officials to comply with the government’s plan to end child marriage by 2030. Ending the practice includes putting a stop to the auctioning of girls.

South Sudan’s anti-human trafficking chief called the case reminiscent of others he has seen across the country, in which girls are forced or tricked into marriage after being told they are going to live with relatives and go to school instead.

“It is clear that some human-trafficking practices are hidden in our culture,” John Mading said.