Prince Harry sued for defamation by UK charity Sentebale

Prince Harry is being sued for defamation by the charity he co-founded in honour of his late mother, Princess Diana.​

The royal launched Sentebale in 2006 to help young people with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana.

The charity made headlines in March last year when the Duke of Sussex quit following a high-profile dispute.​

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A spokesman for Sentebale says the court action is due to an alleged "adverse media campaign" and claimed it caused disruption and "reputational harm" to the charity.​

According to a record made public on Friday, the charity lodged a defamation claim last month at the High Court against Harry and a former trustee at the charity, Mark Dyer. ​

The pair are being sued for either libel or slander. No documents were available.

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"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," Sentebale said Friday in a statement on its website.

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.

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.

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 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 in August 2025.

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

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