A charity co-founded by Prince Harry in Africa to honor his late mother, Princess Diana, has sued him for defamation after he stepped down as a patron last year. Sentebale, which supports young people living with HIV in Botswana and Lesotho, filed suit last month in London’s High Court, according to court records viewed Friday. The case puts a charity created to serve vulnerable people into open conflict with one of its founders, with the legal machinery now grinding in London while the organization says its work has been disrupted. **Who Has the Power** Online filings show Harry and his friend, Mark Dyer, a former trustee at the charity, are being sued for either libel or slander. No documents were available. Sentebale said Friday in a statement on its website, “The charity seeks the court’s intervention, protection, and restitution following a coordinated adverse media campaign conducted since 25 March 2025 that has caused operational disruption and reputational harm to the charity, its leadership, and its strategic partners.” A spokesperson for Harry and Dyer said the pair “categorically reject these offensive and damaging claims.” The lawsuit puts the Duke of Sussex in an unaccustomed position as a defendant in the High Court. Over the past three years, he has repeatedly been on the other side of litigation as the leading claimant in invasion of privacy suits against Britain’s most prominent tabloids over allegations of phone hacking and unlawful snooping by journalists and the private eyes they hired. Now the legal arena he has used against media power is being used against him. **What the Charity Says Was at Stake** Sentebale supports young people living with HIV in Botswana and Lesotho. In its statement, the charity said it was seeking “the court’s intervention, protection, and restitution” after what it described as a coordinated adverse media campaign. The organization said that campaign caused “operational disruption and reputational harm” to the charity, its leadership, and its strategic partners. Harry co-founded Sentebale, which means “forget me not” in the language of Lesotho, about 20 years ago in memory of his mother, who was a prominent advocate for treatment of HIV and AIDS and helped reduce stigma around the disease. Prince Seeiso of Lesotho was the co-founder. The charity’s public dispute now sits in stark contrast to that origin story, with the institution’s internal conflict spilling into court records and public statements. **How the Split Opened Up** Disagreements at the charity surfaced in 2023 over a new fundraising strategy, and the two founders stepped down as patrons in March 2025 in support of trustees who had quit. At the time, they said the relationship between the board and its chair, Sophie Chandauka, was beyond repair. Chandauka later accused Harry of orchestrating a campaign of bullying and harassment to try to force her out. As the dispute unfolded, Chandauka told Sky News that filming for one of Harry’s Netflix programs had interfered with a scheduled fundraiser for Sentebale and that an incident with his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, became a source of friction. The details point to a charity caught between fundraising plans, media production, and internal power struggles, with the people it was created to serve far from the center of the fight. The Charity Commission for England and Wales investigated and criticized both sides for allowing the issue to become public and damaging the organization’s reputation, but found no evidence of widespread bullying or misogyny at Sentebale. “Sentebale’s problems played out in the public eye, enabling a damaging dispute to harm the charity’s reputation, risk overshadowing its many achievements, and jeopardize the charity’s ability to deliver for the very beneficiaries it was created to serve,” commission CEO David Holdsworth said in a statement in August 2025. Harry’s spokesperson had criticized the commission’s report while Chandauka welcomed it. The report was written by Brian Melley, and Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, contributed to it.
