Parents who share pictures of their children on social media are putting their human rights at risk, the United Nations has warned.

The UN's special rapporteur Joseph Cannataci said that "strong guidelines" were needed to preserve the rights of children whose parents upload video and images of them.

During a mission to the UK to assess the privacy situation he also found that kindergarten-age children were being surveilled using CCTV at school and in their bedrooms.

At a press conference on Friday he suggested there could be a rising number of cases involving children who argue their rights have been infringed because their parents had posted videos and images of them on the internet.

"How do you deal with parents who insist on taking a video of their kids every single day and posting it on YouTube every single day?

"We've already seen the very first cases of kids suing their parents because of the stuff they have posted on Facebook about them," he said.