A charity co-founded by Prince Harry in Africa to honour 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 the suit last month in London's High Court, according to court records viewed on Friday (April 10, 2026).

Online filings show Prince Harry and his friend, Mark Dyer, a former trustee at the charity, are being sued for either libel or slander. No documents were available.

“The charity seeks the court's intervention, protection, and restitution following a coordinated adverse media campaign conducted since March 25, 2025, that has caused operational disruption and reputational harm to the charity, its leadership, and its strategic partners,” Sentebale said on Friday in a statement on its website.

A spokesperson for Prince Harry and Mr. Dyer said the pair “categorically reject these offensive and damaging claims”.

On the other side of litigation

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.

Prince 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 the treatment of HIV and AIDS and helped reduce stigma around the disease.

Prince Seeiso of Lesotho was the co-founder.

Disagreements

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. Ms. Chandauka later accused Prince Harry of orchestrating a campaign of bullying and harassment to try to force her out.

As the dispute unfolded, Ms. Chandauka told Sky News that filming for one of Prince Harry's Netflix programmes 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 Charity Commission for England and Wales investigated and criticised both sides for allowing the issue to become public and damaging the organisation'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 jeopardising the charity's ability to deliver for the very beneficiaries it was created to serve,” commission CEO David Holdsworth said in a statement last August.

Prince Harry's spokesperson had criticised the commission's report while Ms. Chandauka welcomed it.