Overview
- The UN General Assembly voted in favor of the 'Correct the map' resolution on September 4, 2026, with 164 votes for, one against (the United States) and six abstentions.
- The resolution, sponsored by Togo and backed by the African Union, calls on the UN, UNESCO, member states, schools and mapping platforms to progressively adopt area‑equivalent projections such as Equal Earth for educational and official uses.
- Togo said it will update school geography materials by the end of 2026 and France announced it will abandon Mercator in official usage, while the resolution itself is non‑binding and leaves technical uses like maritime and air navigation to continue using Mercator where appropriate.
- The United States was the sole vote against the measure and framed it as ideological, while proponents described the change as a corrective to colonial‑era visual biases that have symbolically minimized Africa and other equatorial regions.
- Experts say the shift will be gradual because every flat map distorts some features and wide adoption depends on national curricula, UN agency policies and cooperation from private map platforms that currently use Mercator tiling for many web maps.