boniĝi’s Founding Director, Dr Eve Lester, is a public and international lawyer with more than 25 years experience as a legal practitioner, policy analyst, researcher, advocate, and scholar.

In 2020, Eve is the recipient of a Myer Innovation Fellowship.

Eve has worked on immigration detention issues with UNHCR, and with several leading international NGOs, including Human Rights First, Amnesty International (as head of its refugee and migrants rights program), and the Jesuit Refugee Service (including as JRS’s Geneva Representative).  She has served as Director and Principal Solicitor of the Refugee Advice and Casework Service (now Refugee Legal) in Melbourne, Australia, and has also been an independent adviser to governments.

Eve has visited places of detention in many parts of the world: Australia, Europe, North America, the Pacific, South East Asia, and West Africa.

Eve was commissioned by UNHCR to write its manual for monitoring conditions of immigration detention:

• UNHCR, Monitoring Immigration Detention: Practical Manual (UNHCR, 2014) 

Eve is the author of more than 50 other publications, many on immigration detention. They include the following:

• ‘The Right to Liberty’ in Cathryn Costello, Jane McAdam, and Michelle Foster (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2020)
• Making Migration Law: The Foreigner, Sovereignty and the Case of Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
• ‘25 Years of Mandatory Detention – From “Interim Measure” to Immovable Policy’ The Guardian (online), 5 May 2017