Former Bermuda High School Head Girl Aliyyah Ahad has been named as Bermuda’s 2014 Rhodes Scholar.

“It is an absolute honour,” an elated Ms Ahad told The Royal Gazette last night, adding that it had also come as a surprise to learn that she’d been successful.

Speaking from Morocco where she’s currently working with pregnant sub-Saharan migrant women in the capital city of Rabat, Ms Aham said the subject of migration has fascinated her ever since she explored France’s 2005 riots as part of her studies at BHS.

Her aim, at the conclusion of her studies, is to “advise, create and promote more humane local and international migration policies”.

“This type of assistance is so needed and yet is sadly underfunded,” she said. “Even in Bermuda there are abuses against migrant communities in the form of racism, sham marriages, servitude and exploitation.”

Ms Ahad graduated from BHS in 2008, getting top marks in both her GCSE’s and the International Baccalaureate. Along with being named head girl at the school, she won the Kathy McKenzie Memorial Prize for Integrity, a merit scholarship for the IB programme and the RA Ferguson II Scholarship for Contribution to Student Life.

She was also the recipient of the Bermuda Teen Services’ Outstanding Teen Award in the category of Outstanding Overall.

Ms Ahad graduated from the University of Toronto in 2012 with a Honours Bachelor of Arts with High Distinction in Political Science and Sociology.

Since returning to the Island, she has completed the Government 12-month Cabinet Office Internship Programme and subsequently worked with the Bermuda Human Rights Commission and the Bermuda Office of the Ombudsman.

She is also the professional development co-chair of the Board of Bermuda’s Emerging Professionals and the Youth Division of the Chamber of Commerce.

Ms Ahad plans to read for a MSc in Migration Studies at St Hilda’s College in Oxford.