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STORY: Children at this refugee camp in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have known little but war.

However, the battlefield of a chessboard is helping provide them with some peace of mind.

Once a week, players from a club in the nearby city of Goma come and teach.

"Chess in the City" founder, Akili Bashige Lwenda, says growing up in the camps means young minds are shaped by conflict.

"We want to break this infernal cycle. Firstly by occupying their minds, because chess eliminates stress, it manages stress, it gives people the opportunity to find peaceful solutions to problems. So that's why we're much more interested in them, so that chess can bring peace. And so that they can rediscover themselves, rediscover logic."

Congo's east has been ravaged by violence for decades with armed groups fighting over national identity, ethnicity and resources.

Two years of clashes between the army and rebels from the M23 group have sent hundreds of thousands fleeing their homes for sanctuaries like this one, the Focus Congo camp in Kibati.

Claude Bwenge, director of the association that runs the camp, said the daily lives of children have been transformed by the chess program.

"These children were scattered. They were playing dangerous games. But since we started this activity here, you can see for yourself how very, very concentrated they are."

Lwenda says the ultimate aim is to train young players to take part in major tournaments.

Those who go to compete internationally, he says, will discover a "peace outside the violence we are experiencing".

And he hopes they can return to their communities as peacemakers.