(Reuters) - A majority of football fans from 15 countries will support FIFA's compensation to migrant workers in Qatar for human rights abuses during the country's preparations for the 2022 World Cup, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

A YouGov poll of more than 17,000 fans from 15 countries, ten of them European, commissioned by Amnesty International showed that 73 percent of respondents would support the proposal, while 10 percent oppose it.

And 67 percent of respondents, or more than two-thirds, said national football associations should speak out about human rights issues related to the World Cup in Qatar as well as demand compensation for migrant workers.

“People around the world are united in their desire to see FIFA advance and make up for the suffering that migrant workers have endured in Qatar,” said Steve Cockburn, Head of Economic and Social Justice at Amnesty International.

"The past cannot be abolished, but a compensation program represents a clear and simple way in which FIFA and Qatar can provide at least some measure of compensation to the hundreds of thousands of workers who made this tournament possible."

FIFA said a wide range of measures have been taken in the past few years to improve worker protections in Qatar.

"FIFA has taken note of the survey, which was conducted on behalf of Amnesty International, and included participants from ten countries in Europe and five countries from the rest of the world," he said in a statement.

"Participants may not be fully aware of the measures that FIFA and its partners have implemented in Qatar in the past years to protect workers involved in organizing the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar," he added.

Amnesty and other rights groups called on FIFA in May to allocate $440 million to compensate migrant workers in Qatar for human rights abuses.

FIFA said in the same month that it was evaluating Amnesty's proposal and that it had already compensated a number of workers, who received $22.6 million as of December 2021.

The government of the Government of Qatar had said that work was still underway to develop its labor system, but it denied a 2021 Amnesty International report saying that thousands of migrant workers were still being exploited.

Amnesty International also called on FIFA and Qatar to establish a program to compensate for unpaid wages and recruitment fees paid by hundreds of thousands of workers and for injuries and deaths.

"The program should be developed, and an initial meeting of key stakeholders held, before the tournament kicks off on November 20, 2022," the organization said, adding that workers and trade unions should be involved in the programme.

"The program should also support initiatives to protect workers' rights in the future," she added.