Africa: US Repeatedly Votes Against Africa's Interests At the UN

What the report says

AllAfrica, citing Premium Times, reported that the United States was the only country to vote against an Africa-backed UN General Assembly resolution on Friday that would encourage use of the Equal Earth projection, a map viewed as more accurately showing Africa’s size. The measure was introduced by Togo and supported by all 54 African states, along with Israel and most other UN members. Supporters said the longstanding Mercator map distorts the relative size of Africa and other regions and carries a colonial-era legacy.

The article places that vote in the context of several other recent UN decisions in which the US opposed resolutions supported by African governments. Those included a Ghana-led proposal to recognize the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity, a resolution on South-South and Triangular Cooperation, a call to end the US embargo on Cuba, and a proposed high-level meeting marking the 25th anniversary of the Durban Declaration on racism and discrimination.

US representative Yaryna Ferencevych said the map resolution was unnecessary and distracted from more urgent global issues. Togo’s foreign minister, Robert Dussey, argued that maps shape perceptions and that a fairer world begins with a fairer map. The resolution is non-binding, but the debate may influence education materials and digital mapping tools.