It's been touted as "timely and groundbreaking", "a major achievement" and "the first of its kind" so why have so few African heads of states turned up at a special summit to adopt a convention to protect millions of the continent's internally displaced?

Years of negotiations spearheaded by the 53-member African Union have culminated in the treaty to give rights to some 11.8 million IDPs, almost half the world's displaced population.

AU officials have celebrated it as a home-grown solution to a problem that they say impedes development - (many IDPs are young, unable to work or attend school), causes instability (between IDPs and local communities; IDP camps are also exposed to attack and exploitation by armed groups), and prevents countries from meeting U.N. goals to reduce poverty.

Given the significance of this pact, the first legally binding agreement on internal displacement with a continental scope, it is perhaps a surprise that more heads of states haven't flown to Uganda where the AU summit is being held at the luxury Speke Munyonyo resort - a haven of manicured lawns, palm trees and endless buffets.

So far, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, Zambia's Rupiah Banda and of course, the host, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, have been sighted and are in attendance to witness this historic moment.

Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is being pursued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur, and Joseph Kabila, president of Democratic Republic of Congo, have not shown up - even though their countries together account for more Africa's IDPs.

AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping explained that the busy travelling schedule of an African leader has its part to play why not so many heads of state are in attendance here in Kampala.

"You have so many meetings that some of these heads of state are divided in several meetings. For instance, you have the (U.N.) General Assembly in September and October, then you had the G20 summit and some of us Africans had to go. You have African and South American summit as well. We have different regional summits - one on the central African region that will take place in Kinshasa, DRC, soon. We have some other regional organisations such as ECOWAS that held last week a meeting on Guinea and Niger," Ping told reporters.

"We shall a meeting very soon on southern Sudan. I mention just some of the meetings. As you know there is an important meeting in Stockholm on development between the European Union and the African Union. There are maybe 10 heads of states in Stockholm. The president of Equatorial Guinea was announced here and then he was obliged to be in his country to receive the newly-elected president of Gabon for very important, crucial issues and he was obliged to send his prime minister. Myself I have been away from headquarters (in Addis Ababa) for almost two months. From here I'm going almost directly to South Africa to attend the parliament of South Africa. Many of the heads of state are invited there, so you see it is not easy to convene all member states.

"But I'm sure this is very important for the continent. Sometimes it is more important to some countries who are hosting many displaced persons or refugees...but I can assure you that all of them are concerned. All of them here, the important thing is to be represented."

"We have 46 countries here represented by their prime ministers, some by their vice-presidents and some by the ministers in charge of these questions," Ping explained.

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