Overview
- The General Assembly approved Togo's 'Correct the map' resolution on Monday, September 7, 2026, with 164 votes in favor, six abstentions and the United States as the only country to vote against.
- The measure is non-binding and asks governments, educational systems, international organisations and technology companies to use Equal Earth and other equal-area projections when depicting relative land size.
- Cartographers say the Mercator projection inflates regions far from the equator so Greenland can appear as large as Africa even though Africa is about 14 times bigger, and Equal Earth was developed in 2018 to preserve true land area.
- Togo's foreign minister Robert Dussey called the vote a correction for dignity and equality, while the US delegation rejected the initiative as politically charged rather than purely technical.
- Practical change depends on voluntary adoption by mapmakers, schools, publishers and platforms, and the resolution could reshape classroom maps, media visuals and how people perceive the size and importance of regions such as Africa.