Only about 2 percent of all child deaths are from war injuries, the report said.

In wealthy countries, indigenous peoples like American Indians, Australian aborigines and New Zealand Maoris have injury rates more than double the country’s average.

In the United States, accidents kill 12,175 children a year  more than all diseases combined, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control based on hospital records, which was released in conjunction with the W.H.O. and Unicef report.

Car crashes were the leading cause, except for infants under 1 year of age, who more often died of suffocation, and those age 1 to 4, who more often drowned.

The three changes that would save the most lives of American children, said Ileana Arias, the Centers for Disease Control’s chief of injury prevention, would be for more states to pass “graduated driver’s license” laws, which forbid teenagers to drive at night or with teenage passengers, to enforce seat-belt laws on teenagers and to make all children younger than 8 ride in booster seats.

Domestic fatal injury rates were highest for American Indians, lowest for Asians and about equal for blacks and whites in the United States. Twice as many boys as girls died accidentally.

When the global data are divided by sex, boys die more often than girls in all accidents, except burns. That anomaly occurs, Dr. Krug said, because most burns happen in the kitchen and because girls in Asia are more likely to wear long garments of flammable material. Also, he said, it is impossible to be sure, but some of the burn deaths reported may not have been accidental, but attacks by suitors or families settling scores.

The report emphasizes the growing death toll from road accidents as globalization enriches poorer nations. In many poor countries, the streets are choked with a mix of large trucks, small motorcycles and bicycles and sometimes animal carts, often barely visible to truck drivers because of dust and a lack of daytime running lights. Helmets are not universally used, and it is common to see only a male driver on a moped wearing one while a wife and child sit sidesaddle on the back, bareheaded. Accidents involving overloaded buses, minivans and even dump trucks used to transport people often lead to multiple deaths in a single collision.