A bride- price auction: “the most expensive bride in South Sudan”

 The Guardian has the story of a bride-price auction for a child bride in South Sudan:

A teenage bride wed for a record price: the ‘marriage competition’ that divided a nation   Underage marriage is illegal in South Sudan yet so commonplace it rarely attracts attention. But the case of Athiak Dau Riak, who her mother says is only 14, has gone viral, polarising her family and the country.  by Florence Miettaux 

"For months, Marial Garang Jil and Chol Marol Deng, two South Sudanese men in their 40s who come from two different Dinka clans in Jonglei state but now live abroad, had been vying to marry Athiak Dau Riak, a girl her mother says is 14.

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"After the ceremonial part of the wedding in June, when she was given as a wife to Chol Marol Deng, for a payment of 123 cattle, 120m South Sudanese pounds (about $44,000 or £33,000) in cash and a plot of land, she was dubbed “the most expensive bride in South Sudan” in TikTok videos that gained thousands of likes.

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"South Sudan’s 2008 Child Act prohibits early and forced marriage, but according to Unicef, child marriage is “still a common practice” and “recent figures indicate that 52% of girls [in South Sudan] are married before they turn 18, with some girls being married off as young as 12 years old”.

"An Edinburgh University-led report on the “brideprice” system in South Sudan says “customary courts often accept menstruation as the criteria for eligibility to marry” and early marriage is “a common practice … likely motivated by families’ ambitions to gain brideprices for their daughters as soon as possible”.

"Globally, 12 million girls are married in childhood every year, according to another Unicef report. Across sub-Saharan Africa, more than a third of young women were married before the age of 18."