The Gift of Chess visits Uganda’s Nakivale Refugee Settlement

Nakivale refugee settlement was established in 1958 and officially recognized as a refugee settlement in 1960 Nakivale refugee settlement is the 8th largest refugee camp in the world.

Nakivale refugee settlement, is approximately 200 km away from Kampala, Uganda's capital. It is one of the oldest refugee settlements in the Uganda. It is estimated at well beyond 180 square kilometres. This enormous area is geographically divided into three administrative zones – Base camp, Juru and Rubondo. These three zones, in turn, contain a total of 74 individual villages.

It currently hosts 119,587 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea. Although many refugees in the area have been living there for several years, recent conflicts in nearby countries are increasing the number of arrivals per day. The majority of refugees in the settlement are Congolese although the population is largely heterogeneous with many cultures and groups from different nationalities. The settlement is divided into 79 villages with an average of 800 to 1,000 people per village.