UN General Assembly Endorses Equal Earth Projection to Correct Africa's Size on World Maps

On September 4, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution urging governments, schools, international organizations, and technology companies to adopt equal-area maps, specifically the Equal Earth projection, to more accurately represent the relative sizes of landmasses. The resolution, which passed 164 to one with six abstentions, is not legally binding but is described by the U.N. as an act of "cognitive justice and memorial reparation." The United States voted against, while Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine abstained. The Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018, offers a fairer view of global patterns in population, environment, development, and politics compared to the widely used Mercator projection, which dates to 1569 and distorts landmass sizes by enlarging regions near the poles and shrinking those near the equator. The #CorrectTheMap campaign, endorsed by the African Union in August 2025 and led by Togo, argues that the Mercator projection diminishes Africa's significance. Togo's foreign minister, Robert Dussey, announced that his country will be the first to update its geography books, aiming to do so before the end of the year. The U.S. criticized the resolution as a distraction from genuine international issues, while Ukraine objected to how some Equal Earth maps depict Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory but supported efforts to accurately depict Africa's size.