Romania voted in favor of the UN resolution on more accurate maps, while Ukraine abstained due to the representation of Crimea

Romania voted in favor of the UN General Assembly’s “Correct the Map” resolution, adopted on September 4 with 164 votes in favor, to promote maps that more faithfully represent the surface of the continents. Interim Foreign Minister Oana Țoiu announced on Sunday on X that maps influence how the world is perceived and understood.

The resolution, proposed by Togo with the support of the African Union, advocates gradually abandoning the Mercator projection, used for nearly 500 years, and promoting models such as Equal Earth, created in 2018. On Mercator maps, Africa and Greenland may appear comparable in size, although Africa is approximately 14 times larger.

Ukraine abstained, along with Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Serbia, because the new map represents Crimea in a different shade from the rest of Ukraine. Kyiv criticized this choice in the context of Russia’s illegal annexation of the peninsula in 2014. The United States was the only country to vote against the resolution.

The UN document does not oblige states to abandon the Mercator projection and does not alter the legal status of territories or internationally recognized borders。৷,