The UN News UN Mercator map vote, passed by the General Assembly on 5 September 2026, marks the first formal international challenge to a cartographic standard that has shaped how the world perceives itself for 450 years. 164 countries voted in favour, one (the United States) voted against, and six abstentions were recorded.
The resolution, sponsored by Togo and backed by the African Union’s 54 member states, is non-binding. But its scope goes well beyond a symbolic gesture, and the gap it is trying to close is not small.
A 450-year distortion built into classrooms and boardrooms
Gerardus Mercator, the Flemish cartographer, designed his projection in 1569 to help European navigators read compass bearings accurately. The mathematics required to represent a curved globe on a flat sheet meant that landmasses near the poles were stretched dramatically relative to those near the equator. Greenland, for instance, covers roughly 2.2 million square kilometres. Africa covers 30.4 million, roughly 14 times more. On the Mercator projection, they look approximately the same size.
That mismatch has been embedded in school atlases, conference-room maps, and digital platforms ever since. As Togolese foreign minister Robert Dussey put it when the resolution was debated: ‘A fair world begins with a fair map.’ The African Union’s argument is that the distortion has not been merely aesthetic. Downplaying Africa’s physical scale has, over generations, implicitly understated the continent’s resources, population, and investment potential.
What the UN Mercator map vote actually requires
The resolution encourages governments, schools, international organisations, and technology companies to use the Equal Earth projection and other so-called equal-area maps in contexts where relative size matters. It also calls for teaching the limitations of any flat map in representing a spherical planet, according to UN News. Neither instruction is mandatory, but the breadth of the audience targeted (from primary classrooms to tech platforms) suggests the intent is systemic rather than piecemeal.
The Equal Earth projection itself was created in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič and Bernie Jenny, according to NPR. Unlike the Mercator, it preserves the relative size of landmasses while maintaining a visually familiar, oval silhouette. It is already used by some scientific bodies, but its adoption in general-purpose mapping has been limited.
France announced it was planning to abandon Mercator for its maps of the world, aligning with the broader effort championed by the African Union, UN News reported. Whether other high-income countries follow, or whether the US position (the sole no vote) hardens into active resistance, will shape how quickly institutions actually update their materials.
The obstacles ahead are real
Non-binding resolutions have a mixed record. Institutions that have used Mercator-based maps for decades face practical questions: which projection to adopt for which purpose, how to update digital infrastructure, and how to train teachers to explain why the maps on their walls until recently showed a world that was, in a measurable sense, wrong. The resolution does not answer those questions directly.
There is also no single replacement. Equal Earth is one option; the Gall-Peters projection has been used by advocates for decades but draws its own criticisms. The resolution’s reference to “other equal-area maps” leaves room for disagreement about what, exactly, should replace what.
Still, the vote itself represents something that has not happened before: a clear international majority, anchored by the African Union and endorsed by 164 governments, stating formally that the Mercator projection is not fit for general purpose when accuracy of scale matters. The mechanism for change is now on record.
The The Optimist Daily podcast, which covered the vote in its 18 September 2026 episode, noted that the resolution is expected to drive changes to maps used by institutions worldwide, with the African Union’s membership providing the political foundation for sustained pressure on governments and technology companies to follow through.
