Inadequate funding by donor governments is jeopardising the goals of lower population growth and improved rights for women set at a landmark population conference in Cairo in 1994, a United Nat-ions study said yesterday.

In its annual report on the state of the world's population, assessing progress since the Cairo meeting, the UN population fund (UNFPA) said donor countries had put up only about half the $6.1bn (€4.9bn, £3.4bn) a year they agreed to contribute to population and reproductive health programmes by 2005.