Facebook faces criticism for hosting the auction of 17-year-old Sudanese bride on its site
A 17-year-old girl, Nyalong Ngong Deng, from South Sudan was recently sent off as a bride to the highest bidder -
The auction was hosted on social networking site, Facebook, on October 25
- The post was later taken down on November 9, after the site became aware of the post. -
The account responsible for the post was also banned -
However, Nyalong was already married off at the time
Most people around the world now raise their voices against the age long trend of families marrying off their underage daughters for high dowries.
This has been considered as child trafficking especially if the child is sent off after an auction.
Globalsshows.blogspot earlier reported that a 17-year-old South Sudanese girl, Nyalong Ngong Deng, was auctioned for marriage to the highest bidder on social networking site, Facebook.
According to reports, the auction was publicised on the site by an individual who isn't even a member of the girl's family. However, the post was later taken down by Facebook and the user was banned.
A number of men reportedly participated in the auction with business tycoon, Kok Alat, emerging as the winner after he presented 520 cows, three Toyota V8 cars and KSh 1m (N3.5m).
Daily Mail reported that country director, George Otim, at Plan International, a child rights organisation, said: “That a girl could be sold for marriage on the world’s biggest social networking site in this day and age is beyond belief.”
A spokesperson for Facebook, also reportedly explained in a statement that posts that promote human trafficking and other ills are highly prohibited.
Part of the statement reads:
“Any form of human trafficking -- whether posts, pages, ads or groups is not allowed on Facebook. We removed the post and permanently disabled the account belonging to the person who posted this to Facebook,' a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We're always improving the methods we use to identify content that breaks our policies, including doubling our safety and security team to more than 30,000 and investing in technology.”
