Support for the United Nations remains high with 55 per cent of people surveyed in 37 countries holding a positive view of the organisation, according to a new report from the Washington-based think tank The Pew Research Centre.

The survey, which comes ahead of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, also found views in some countries have turned more negative in recent years.

A median of 55 per cent of people have a favourable opinion of the UN and a 37 per cent have an unfavourable opinion.

A majority of adults in Canada, the US and most European countries surveyed have a positive view of the UN.

Fifty-five per cent of Australians have a positive view of the UN, the survey found.

“Opinions are also generally more favourable that unfavourable across 12 Asia-Pacific nations. In India, favourable views are about twice as common as unfavourable views, though 41 per cent do not offer an opinion” the survey report said.

“People in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Colombia, Peru and Brazil also see the UN in a more favourable than unfavourable light,” the report said.

“Opinions are more mixed in Spain, Mexico, Chile and Argentina.”

People who view the UN negatively are largely in countries that have been criticised by the UN agencies over issues such as human rights.

“People view the UN more unfavourably than favourably in Pakistan, Greece, Japan, Turkey, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Israel,” the report said.

“Israelis have the most negative opinion of the UN in the survey: 79 per cent see the organization unfavourably. But there are significant differences by ethnicity, with Israeli Jews reporting much more negative views than Israeli Arabs (87 per cent vs 50 per cent unfavourable).

Views of the UN have become more negative in 10 countries since the last survey.

“For example, 80 per cent of Nigerians had a favourable view of the UN in 2025, compared with 63 per cent in 2026. And the share of Filipinos with a favourable view decreased by 16 percentage points between 2024 and 2026,” the report said.

“In South Korea, the share of adults with a favourable view of the organisation in 2026 is the lowest we have measured since our surveys began there in 2007.

“In the US, the share has decreased by 3 points since 2025.

“In some countries, the share with a favourable opinion has not shifted much over the past year but is down from relatively favourable ratings in 2020 or 2021 – during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In France, for example, 51 per cent of adults today view the UN positively, down from 63 per cent in 2021. We also observed this in the Netherlands and Sweden, as well as in Singapore, where our favourability data only goes back to 2021,” the report said.

Views of the UN improved in only one country surveyed. In Sri Lanka about two-thirds of people (66 per cent) now view the UN favourably, up from 58 per cent in 2024.

In many countries, young people view the UN more favourably than older people, a consistent pattern across previous surveys.

“For example, 76 per cent of Italians aged 18 to 34 have a favourable view of the UN, compared with 53 per cent of those aged 50 and older,” the report said.

“Even in Israel and the West Bank and East Jerusalem – where we measure very unfavourable opinions of the UN – young people have more positive views of the organization than older adults do.”

The survey found that across most countries, people on the ideological left tend to feel more positive about the UN that people on the right.

“The divide is consistently wide in the US, where 76 per cent of liberals and 35 per cent of conservatives currently express a favourable view,” the report said.

“There are similar gaps between people on the left and right in Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom,” it said.

Read the full report: Many across 37 countries view the UN favorably, but opinions have become more negative in some places | Pew Research Center