The UN General Assembly on Friday backed a resolution calling for a shift away from the traditional Mercator projection of the world, with the US opposing the measure.
The resolution, put forward by Togo and backed by the African Union, passed with 164 votes in favour, six abstentions and a single vote against by the US.
The text encourages UN member states, international organisations and others to promote maps that more accurately depict the relative size of continents, particularly Africa.
The Mercator projection, developed in the 16th century and still widely used, distorts the size of land masses, particularly those closer to the poles, making Africa appear smaller relative to regions including Europe and North America.
“The persistence of these distortions in maps has caused throughout time significant consequences,” Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey told the General Assembly.
“It has contributed to symbolically minimising the size of Africa, as well as other regions, which has created an unbalanced vision of global geography.”
Mr Dussey said the campaign went beyond cartography. “It has to do with cognitive justice, with access to precise geographical knowledge, the dignity of peoples, historic memory,” he said.
The resolution also calls for co-operation among UN bodies, regional organisations, academia, think tanks and technology groups to strengthen national mapping capabilities and support research and innovation, particularly in developing countries and Africa.
The US, which voted against the resolution, slammed the text as an ideological exercise that it said undermined the UN’s credibility.
“This initiative is presented as an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions,” said Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN. “The United States clearly sees it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to.”
Washington criticised the General Assembly for debating “map projects from the 16th century and their role in promoting reparations and cognitive justice” rather than challenges to international peace.
“Resolutions like this one and the ideological agenda they promote are barnacles on our work here and the reason this institution is losing its credibility,” Mr Waltz said. “When the United Nations questions why it is losing legitimacy in the world and is not taken seriously time and again, we point to resolutions such as this.”
The resolution promoted the Equal Earth projection, which more accurately portrays the size of the continents.
But Ukraine’s UN envoy Andriy Melnyk, who abstained, said Kyiv could not support the resolution in its current form because “of a specific issue concerning the Equal Earth cartographic projection”.
“The Equal Earth maps depict parts of Ukraine’s territory that have been temporarily occupied by Russia in flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations and international law in a manner that is wholly unacceptable,” he said.
Mr Melnyk argued that the depiction violated principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity and was inconsistent with UN General Assembly resolutions affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and rejecting Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
