Push against military human rights violations earns Aguon a U.S. Peace Prize nomination

The U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation is an organization that awards the U.S. Peace Prize to those committed to promoting peace and justice work. More importantly, it nationally recognizes those who publicly oppose war. Past awardees include Ajamu Baraka, and most recently Christine Ahn on behalf of Women Cross DMZ. The Peace Prize was also awarded to organizations such as Code Pink and Veterans for Peace. One of the nominees this year is none other than Guam's very own human rights lawyer and founder of Blue Ocean Law, Julian Aguon.


"I think it's just an honor because it situates our work in like a long-standing tradition of people and organizations who are committed to bringing an end to war," he says. 

Aguon was elated and shocked when he was informed of his nomination.

"I would say that this prize could have easily gone to so many other people in the community doing really good work," he says. "So many other people are deserving of this award so I was very you know happy and honored to be nominated."

The peace and justice work Aguon and his firm have done in conjunction with local grassroots organizations earned him the nomination. Blue Ocean Law recently filed a submission to the UN Special Rapporteurs on behalf of Prutehi Litekyan Save Ritidian.


"That resulted in a pretty historic joint allegation letter sent by the human rights experts to the U.S. government alleging various human rights violations that have been occasioned by the military buildup," he said. "So much of the dollars that could be spent on health care, in essential care infrastructure, education. So many money that could be prioritized and sort of allocated to these kinds of sort of industries and these kind of sectors of the public sphere have been sort of allocated to the U.S. military. The U.S. military really enjoys sort of like a really disproportionate amount of the public treasury. Of the money of this country gets spent to war and that's something that has to change."

But he says the deeper issue is the lack of consultation with massive developments such as the military build-up

"They really proceeded sort of without sort of these safeguards that the international community finds important so of course I clearly think that the military buildup is proceeding in a way that's harmful to the public interest not only to the environment," he says

And aside from running his law firm, Aguon is also an author. He says he was humbled when his book, "The Properties of Perpetual Light," received such positive reactions and support from the literary community and fellow writers. 

"It's been pretty amazing ride so far and I wanna stay on it I think," he says. 

Aguon credits his team and supportive partner for getting him this far and says he'll continue to keep doing it as long as he can.