Americans Say the United Nations Is Doing a Bad Job. They’re Right.

“Restoring trust, managing transformation: A United Nations that delivers for all.” 

That’s the theme for the annual meeting of heads of state and government at the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, taking place this week at the United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York City. 

A Gallup poll released Sunday found that a majority of Americans think the U.N. is doing a “poor job” protecting human rights, upholding international law, supporting sustainable development, and administering humanitarian assistance, international peace, and security.

Americans are right. A look at the resolutions passed by last year’s General Assembly—often nonbinding, unlike those of the U.N. Security Council—shows an organization that meddles in the domestic politics of its members while failing to pursue its stated mission to “maintain international peace and security.”

Active wars rage in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, with internecine conflicts erupting yearly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet the previous General Assembly passed five times as many U.N. resolutions directed at Israel as any other nation, including countries with notorious human rights records like Cuba, Iran, and Myanmar. 

Thanks to its unwieldy organizational structure, the U.N. is highly susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. It can’t enforce the policies it adopts, and its actions often depend on the whims of the Security Council, whose five permanent members opportunistically exercise veto power. Unable to do much to curtail global conflicts, the U.N. has focused on issues better handled by domestic governments, like environmental laws and racial justice. 

The incongruent nature of its mission and what happens in practice are perhaps best seen in the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, which is currently presided over by a representative of Indonesia, whose government sanctions arbitrary killings, torture, and crackdowns on dissent, according to the State Department’s 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

U.N. officials themselves have a track record of abuse. In the past decade, reports by the Associated Press, Human Rights Watch and the U.S. Congress have detailed sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers. In 2024, The Guardian reported that instead of doling out humanitarian aid earmarked for rebuilding Iraq, U.N. officials were “allegedly demanding bribes in return for helping businessmen win contracts on postwar reconstruction projects in the country.” That was just “one of a number of claims of corruption and mismanagement” the outlet uncovered in a $1.5 billion U.N. program.

American taxpayers don’t want to fund a mismanaged bureaucracy. When Gallup asked in 2025 what role they see the U.N. playing in the world today, a majority of Americans said they want an institution that “serves as a forum for communication between nations,” not a policy development shop.

Last week, Reuters reported the U.S. sent the U.N. $725 million for its regular budget, and $102 million for its peacekeeping missions. The U.S. still owes the organization $1.312 billion under its funding obligations. 

However, the Trump administration has cut much of the voluntary funding sent to the U.N., and the president’s 2027 budget would eliminate funding for most U.N. bodies, including its regular budget and peacekeeping operations.