South Sudanese today remember those who have died in the first full year since the start of the ‘December crisis’ that has turned into a devastating civil war.

One year ago today, South Sudanese soldiers began to kill South Sudanese soldiers in the nation’s capital Juba. With shocking speed, the violence spread from army barracks into the neighborhoods of Juba and beyond as some turned their guns on unarmed men, women and children.

In the year that followed, the South Sudanese people have suffered a “colossal loss of life,” according to a civil society initiative to memorialize the dead.

Women have been raped and killed, unarmed men rounded up and massacred, and even children attacked, maimed or murdered as if their lives had no value.

Acts of unspeakable brutality were perpetrated in places of worship, places of healing, in homes and in government buildings. Villagers have been hunted like animals through forests and swamps and whole towns and cities desolated.

The loss has been ‘devastating’ and no one has been officially counting the dead, according to a press release by Naming the Ones We Lost, a project carried out by civil society volunteers.

Whenever possible, each of those who died will be named to a list kept by the volunteers, as a way to memorialize the departed and ‘promote human dignity.’

So far the group has collected a list of hundreds of names: “The list contains people of different professions – both civilian and military. Those killed are traditional chiefs, doctors, engineers, housewives, pastoralists, nurses, religious leaders, students…”

“…farmers, traders, men in uniform, including UN peacekeepers, but the majority of the victims on the list are civilians and young people, demonstrating that South Sudan has lost so much of its human capacity and potential.”

Leaders of the Naming the Ones We Lost project are urging the families of victims to come forward to add the names of their loved ones to the list. Though the war’s death toll has elsewhere been estimated at 50,000 to 100,000, the list so far contains only 572 verified names.

Friends and relatives of the dead are expected to read aloud these names at commemoration events in Juba and Nairobi today.

“Religious groups, South Sudanese people and their friends around the country and in neighbouring countries are taking a moment to pause and acknowledge the dead, including both those named here and those whose names are not yet publicly known,” reads the press release.

View the full list of names here.