The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to endorse a shift away from the centuries-old Mercator map towards the Equal Earth projection, a cartographic model that more accurately represents the relative sizes of the world's continents. The resolution passed on Friday with 164 votes in favour, one against — cast by the United States — and six abstentions, including Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine.

The Mercator projection, first published in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator as a tool for maritime navigation, distorts the size of landmasses by expanding regions closer to the poles and compressing those near the equator. The result is a familiar but misleading image of the world: Greenland appears roughly the same size as Africa, though Africa is approximately 14 times larger. Europe and North America loom disproportionately large, while Africa, South America and South and Southeast Asia are visually diminished. The resolution was led by Togo and backed by the African Union, whose 54 member states had already adopted the Equal Earth projection earlier this year. The Equal Earth map, developed in 2018 by a team of cartographers including Bojan Savric and Tom Patterson, preserves the proportional surface area of all continents while keeping their shapes as close as possible to their appearance on a globe.

"A fair world begins with a fair map," Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said ahead of the vote. "A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood." Dussey linked the campaign to broader African efforts to confront colonial-era legacies, while stressing it was not an attack on Europe or any other civilisation. Togo has pledged to be the first country to update its school geography materials under the new framework, with Dussey saying the change would come by the end of the year. France, which co-sponsored the resolution, announced it would abandon the Mercator projection, with Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot acknowledging: "Changing the map obviously doesn't change the world. But correcting a distorted representation is already an act of truth."

The resolution is not legally binding and explicitly does not challenge the continued use of the Mercator projection for maritime and aerial navigation, for which it remains technically suited. The United States was the sole country to vote against the measure, with its UN representative arguing the resolution promoted an "ideological agenda" and distracted the General Assembly from genuine issues of international peace and prosperity. Togo has said it plans to convene African Union member states and international supporters within the next six months to coordinate wider adoption, with discussions expected to include technology companies operating mapping, GPS and location-based services.

The vote carries weight beyond cartography. For many African governments and advocates, the dominance of the Mercator map is seen as a symbol of how colonial-era frameworks continue to shape global perceptions, relegating the world's second-largest continent — home to 1.4 billion people and about 20 percent of the Earth's land surface — to a visually peripheral role. Whether the resolution translates into change in classrooms, atlases and digital mapping platforms remains to be seen, but Friday's vote represents an unusually broad international consensus on a question of symbolic and educational significance.