Genocide is often ignored and considered hard to grasp by virtue of its enormity and complexity; it’s easy to stop feeling that sense of human loss when death tolls roll past one thousand, ten thousand or the four hundred thousand recorded deaths in Darfur. This sociological phenomenon is referred to as psychic numbing – as the number of victims grows, the feeling of empathy and sense of loss lessens. STAND has developed a campaign to address this problem. Instead of talking about the total number of people killed in Darfur, we are going to start talking about each death. Individually. Because every death has a name. And every name has a story. We are going to connect Canadians to an individual story so they can continue that person’s fight, now that they are not able to. This campaign gives Canadians the ability to Stand For The Dead.

Stand For The Dead is a fully integrated campaign that engages and inspires Canadians to Stand for the life of one Darfuri victim of genocide. Students on University Campuses and High Schools across Canada will proudly wear T-shirts with one victim’s name across their chest to Stand up and take a stance against the loss and suffering of one mother, father, son or daughter. What will start as curiosity and wonder will evolve into a veritable social movement; an entire generation of empowered students representing individual lives, and individual stories of those who no longer have the opportunity to speak of the atrocities they endured.

Every single name and story that make up the 400,000+ recorded deaths needs to be heard, only then will the enormity of genocide be experienced and understood for what it really is.