On Friday, the UN General Assembly voted to adopt a new world map that accurately depicts Africa’s size. Togo introduced the resolution. It sought to replace the age-old Mercator map with the Equal Earth projection, which is considered more accurate.
The traditional Mercator map is inaccurate not only in its depictions of Africa and other regions close to the equator — the imaginary line that circles the Earth halfway and divides the North and South poles — but also in its exaggeration of the size of countries and regions farther from the equator.
As cartography Professor James Cheshire at University College London puts it, the Mercator projection was created in 1659 to help European sailors navigate the oceans. “That was what it was intended to do, and that’s what it does brilliantly well,” he told the BBC.
But it carries a colonial legacy and reinforces a long-standing Eurocentric hierarchy of global importance.
Yet on Friday, the US voted against adopting the modern, more accurate equal-earth projector.
PREMIUM TIMES reports that the US was the only country that voted against the resolution. Even Israel, one of its closest allies and a country that has shared Washington’s position in the General Assembly over the past year, voted in favour of the resolution. All 54 African countries voted in favour as well.
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, mocked the US and argued that it voted against the resolution because it is uncomfortable with a representation of the world that doesn’t centre the traditional Western perspective.
However, rather than viewing the US vote against Africa’s interests as an isolated event, a review of major UN resolutions in the past year shows it as another instance of the US opposing Africa’s interests on restorative justice.
Vote on slavery
Earlier in the year, the US stood against the request to recognise the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity.
PREMIUM TIMES reported that Ghana made the request to the assembly, backed by African states, in pursuit of healing and reparative justice.
Ghana introduced the resolution, which sought to declare the “trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity” in March.
A total of 123 member states voted in favour of the resolution, including 54 African member states. However, 52 countries abstained, mostly European countries. The abstentions include Britain, Portugal, and Spain, which were, arguably, the most guilty of the slave trade and colonialism.
An estimated 15 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic between the 15th and 19th centuries. Many died during the Middle Passage, while survivors were subjected to forced labour and systemic abuse in the West.
Yet, the US was one of the three countries that voted against a resolution that described the slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity. The other two were Argentina and Israel.
The resolution also urged states to consider apologising for the slave trade and the creation of a reparations fund, which Ghana says will be used to repair the damage caused by the slave trade.
More resolutions
Aside from pan-African resolutions put forward by African countries, the US has also voted against several other resolutions of interest to African countries. This includes issues in which African states voted overwhelmingly in favour.
Last December, for instance, it voted against the resolution on South-South and Triangular Cooperation, which sought to help developing countries tackle challenges and achieve their goals.
The resolution sought to strengthen cooperation among developing countries. It also argued that financing and resource mobilisation are prerequisites for scaling up such cooperation.
A total of 182 countries voted in favour of the resolution, including Nigeria, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, South Sudan, and South Africa. Ten abstained, while the US was the only country to vote against it.
The US also voted against the demand for an end to US sanctions against Cuba in October.
PREMIUM TIMES reported the strong relations between Cuba and African states. Relations between the two sides date back to the post-colonial era.
Cuba has also made significant contributions in healthcare, education, and technical development across multiple African countries.
The resolution was an attempt to reaffirm the demand for an end to the US economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba, which it had declared multiple times.
At least 165 states, including African states, in the 184-member chamber voted in favour of the resolution, including Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Angola, and the 50 African member states of the UN.
The US was among the seven countries that voted against the resolution.
The DDPA is a UN framework, which seeks to address racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”
US justification for dissenting
At the General Assembly on Friday, US representative Yaryna Ferencevych said the resolution mocked the work and purpose of the UN General Assembly.
She insisted the resolution was a “superfluous” agenda that distracted attention from genuine world problems.
“Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th Century, and their role in promoting reparations and ‘cognitive justice’,” Ms Ferencevych said.
The US official’s argument becomes difficult to rationalise when compared to the actions of her principal, President Donald Trump, who has been unilaterally renaming transnational symbols without any basis.
Mr Trump recently announced that he has renamed Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes in North America, to Lake America.
Mr Trump took his trade war with Canada to the water in late August and, with a stroke of a pen, tried to erase over 400 years of cartographic history by renaming Lake Ontario.
Last year, Mr Trump also announced that he had renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Further justifying the US’s opposition to the redrawing of the world map, Ms Ferencevych said that although the initiative is presented as “an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions”, the US “clearly sees it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to.”
“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,” she said.
But Togo’s Foreign Minister, Robert Dussey, argued that “a fair world begins with a fair map.”
“A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood.”
UN resolutions are non-enforceable, so countries are not mandated to implement them. However, the resolution could lead to updates in classroom curricula and everyday technology.
The US also announced that it rejected the resolution on the transatlantic slave trade, which asked states to acknowledge the depth of violence caused by the slave trade, because it did not believe countries should be obliged to pay reparations for actions not prohibited by international law when they happened.
The US ambassador to the UN, Dan Negrea, also accused African countries of using past suffering as leverage to secure funding from other countries.
He said, “The US objects to the cynical usage of historical wrongs as a leverage point to reallocate modern resources to people and nations who are distantly related to the historical victims.”
While justifying its opposition to the resolution backed by African countries, calling for an end to the embargo on Cuba, the US accused Cuba of supporting “terrorist organisations around the globe,” a claim virtually no one else believes.
What are analysts saying?
The President of the Society for International Relations Awareness (SIRA), Owei Lakemfa, attributed US actions to its mindset of global dominance and its imperialistic tendencies.
“The US sees itself as the commander of the world. It has a mentality of trying to enslave other people, so whenever you have other people moving towards progress, it does not.”
“Although the issue of slavery was mainly a European thing, the US was a beneficiary. How do you justify reparations for the holocaust, but not for slavery? It’s just not logical for a so-called freedom-loving, pro-human rights establishment,” he said.
Mr Lakemfa called the US position on the world map “ridiculous,” adding that adopting a more accurate global map will expand human knowledge and correct misdeeds.
“I don’t see what the US will lose if the map of the world shows its true size.”
“All this shows is that Africa must unite for its Pan-African vision. It is only then that the rest of the world will respect us,” Mr Lakemfa said.
Babafemi Badejo, a professor of political science and foreign policy analyst, argued that the US votes only based on what it sees as its own interests.
He said the only lasting solution is for African countries to build their influence and relevance in the world.
“This way, they would be in a better position to influence the decisions of the US and other countries through persuasive negotiations,” he said.
