Love is said to have won in Kidapawan City in North Cotabato, with the city’s mayor – Atty. Jose Paolo M. Evangelista – signing an executive order that creates the Kidapawan LGBTQIA+ Acceptance and Inclusivity (KILAI) Office.
The move – which came at the city’s culmination of the National Women’s Month celebration – is considered as a “major step towards attaining a more accepting, inclusive, and non-discriminatory Kidapawan City,” Evangelista said.
The effort is, nonetheless, a top-to-bottom approach to promoting LGBTQIA human rights, with the mayor himself – a cisgender male who is married with one child – drafting the executive order on behalf of the city’s LGBTQIA community. All the same, following the signing, the local government unit (LGU) now eyes to “engage the Kidapawan LGBTQIA community in all our future activities and projects, together with the Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce and other private stakeholders.”
The new office established by the executive order is tasked to:
- Formulate and conduct meetings and dialogues with members of the LGBTQIA community in Kidapawan City;
- Assess and evaluate their needs;
- Identify possible funding sources to support their needs;
- Coordinate with government agencies to provide livelihood opportunities for them; and
- Recommend courses of action to the mayor and the Sangguniang Panglungsod to hasten the inclusivity and acceptance of the rainbow community.
KILAI will be composed of LGBTQIA employees of the city government, with Juan Eugenio Durano serving as the interim moderator. It will be under the supervision of the mayor.
Kidapawan City still has no anti-discrimination ordinance, and while a step in the right direction, an executive order may be overturned by any sitting mayor not supportive of the LGBTQIA community.
