Africa and the World Map: Six Things Everyone Got Wrong About the UN Vote

Graphic by PolGeoNow, starting from maps by Geordie Bosanko, Justin Kunimune, Canuckguy, and Martin23230. You can take and use this image for free, as long as you follow the rules of the CC BY-SA license, and link back to our site when possible – but please consider buying us a coffee if it's useful to you!

Article by Evan Centanni 

Maps at the United Nations: What Really Happened 

The internet has gone wild this month with news about a United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolution, passed on September 4, to endorse what headlines called a “new world map”. (A General Assembly resolution is a kind of official statement about what most of the world’s countries think or want.)

Unfortunately, most reporting on the UN action has been a mix of exaggerations, misunderstandings, and bad simplifications, with people getting mostly the wrong impressions about what happened. And as in past cases, the media mostly didn’t interview the actual map experts. But not to worry – we have one of those here!

US, Ukraine, and More: Which Countries Criticized the UN’s World Map Vote, and Why

The UN General Assembly Hall in New York City, where this month's map vote took place. Unlike the smaller UN Security Council, the General Assembly has little power to enforce decisions on countries, and instead exists more for building international consensus, setting goals, and overseeing projects. Photo by PolGeoNow, from November 2019 (contact us for permission to use it).

UN Map Debate: The truth about the US and Ukrainian arguments, and what other countries said

As you might have heard, the United Nations (UN) held a vote early this month about maps, discouraging the use of the mapmaking method known as the Mercator projection, which produces world maps that hugely exaggerate the size of places far from the equator (like northern Europe, Siberia, Canada, and Antarctica). The idea is that this is unfair to countries like those in Africa, which look smaller than they really are compared to countries in more-powerful Europe. The Equal Earth projection was promoted as a good alternative, because it perfectly preserves relative sizes (while introducing other kinds of distortion).

Unfortunately, even major news media got key details wrong – for example, the UN didn’t officially “adopt” or “replace” any map or projection. For the truth about what it really did, check out our separate article on six things most people misunderstood about the UN decision. If you have opinions about map projections, you should definitely read that first! But if you're looking for the details on which countries said what, you're already in the right place...

Syria Control Map & Timeline: The End of the SDF - August 2026 (Subscription)

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Researched and written by Djordje Djukic and Evan Centanni. Map by onestopmap.com, Djordje Djukic, and Evan Centanni.  
 

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In the past five months, independent Kurdish-led control of the northeast has melted away under a merger agreement with the Syrian national government, leading to this week's announcement that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have formally ceased to exist (however, claims that integration is complete are greatly exaggerated).

In the southwest, Israeli forces have held their ground and dug in (literally), amid a threat of Israeli civilian "settlements" in the zone, while deep cracks have appeared in Sweida (Suwayda) province's Druze paramilitary "National Guard" coalition, with its leader charting an increasingly controversial political course both internally and externally.

Meanwhile, fighters of the "Islamic State" (ISIS/ISIL) have dramatically reduced their pace of attacks across the country, despite the withdrawal of most US troops, while on the coast, Russia has agreed to share its bases with the Syrian military.

Find the answers to all your questions in our professional report, with full summaries of each major trend and topic, and a detailed, painstakingly-researched timeline of events, with sources cited. Both the timeline and summaries are crafted with care by our dedicated humans - no AI slop. Also included, of course, is the latest update to PolGeoNow's concise, professionally-designed overview map of territorial control in Syria. Subscribe now to see it all.

The included map is dated to August 30, 2026, with the report covering events of the past five months, since the publication of our previous map and report on March 25, 2026.

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Map Only: Somalia in April 2026 (Subscription)

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We're still midway through the process of preparing a full 2026 Somalia Control Map and Report, but subscribers who just need the map can find here a “preliminary edition” based on research up to April 15, 2026. 

This map is researched and fact-checked to approximately the same high standards we apply to reports, but is missing the report itself, which would cite our sources and document what changes have occurred since our previous map report in June 2025. That documentation will be covered in the final report coming later this year, which will also update the map up to the present date at that time.

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PolGeoNow is a world leader in expertise on the geographic details of conflicts in Somalia, with various government and NGO customers relying on us for rigorously-investigated maps of territorial control. The above map is created with reference to PolGeoNow's proprietary database of village-level territorial control assessments, covering the entire territory claimed by Somalia. If you have questions about the sources and rationale for specific mapping decisions, please contact our lead cartographer and we'll be happy to provide answers.

If you're in need of deeper or more detailed information than shown on the map, you can also now contact us for additional services, tailored to your budget. The following are available on a short timeline:

• Licensing of our Somalia maps for use in your own publications (can be included in custom subscriptions)
• Direct consulting on subjects like fine-grained territorial control, accurate location of events, and recent history of control for specific locations going back to 2023
• GIS data consisting of points for towns, villages, and other locations with columns for assessed territorial control at specific points in time; for areas covered by conflict reporting in recent years, this also includes added and corrected locations beyond what's found in widely-available datasets such as OCHA humanitarian info, Google Maps, and OpenStreetMap
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With greater lead time, we can also offer services such as:

• Customized map editions showing the situation on your date of choice (present or past), incorporating additions or modifications as needed for your use case
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World Cup 2026: Which Countries Are (and Aren't) Members of FIFA?

This is an updated edition of our FIFA member countries article, updated and fully revised for the 2026 World Cup in North America! You can also view past versions of the article from 2014, 2018, and 2022.

The six continental confederations of national football teams associated with FIFA. Most, but not all, confederation members are individually members of FIFA too. Map by Evan Centanni, based on work by EOZyo (source).

Around the world, fans of association football - also known in many countries as "soccer" - are about to tune in for the ongoing, month-long men's FIFA World Cup in the US, Mexico, and Canada. Not all the world's countries can advance to the cup, but did they all get a shot at it? Which countries were eligible to enter the tournament, and which are excluded? Read on for PolGeoNow's exclusive guide to the roster of FIFA national football teams...