On a social level, several organizations have pronounced on this, both to join the calls for solidarity and to demand that the solidarity will not justify the situations that have historically subjected Haiti to poverty.

“The big colonial powers (France and the US, in particular) which have impoverished and attacked the Haitian society for centuries, have direct and unavoidable responsibility not only to aid the earthquake victims but to channel enough resources for the country’s reconstruction, respecting the Haitian sovereingty and self-determination once and for all. There is a historical responsibility of the governments of these countries and the Latin American countries, that cannot be limited to the temporary donation of resources for this aid tasks”, reads part of a declaration issued by the Secretariat of the Continental Cry of the Excluded, an alliance of social movements that operates in the Americas.

“We need to keep up the fight for the historical reparation and write-off of the external debt in Haiti, as well as to warn about the foreseeable attempts that will come to legitimize the military intervention of the MINUSTAH [United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti], which will now aim to appear as the only force capable of contributing to aid in the aftermath. We should insist in the illegitimacy of this occupation force that has been in the country since 2004 and which has contributed very little to improving the country’s political and social situation”, the declaration continues.

The grassroots peasant organization Via Campesina made an international call for solidarity in a communique that read as follows: “We cannot stop highlighting and exposing that the effects of any natural catastrophe are always worsened in situations of poverty, vulnerability and exclusion. We are aware that the forces of Nature are not controllable or predictable and that they are not the responsibility of the international community, however the question is: how is it possible that the same international community continues allowing a world based on such injustice and inequality, the same that multiplies the damaging effects and the number of victims of an earthquake like the one suffered in Haiti?”

Also, the Association of Community Radios (AMARC) started an international campaign of solidarity with the people of Haiti. As well as other organizations, AMARC acknowledged in its call that Haiti was facing huge problems before the earthquake and asked for help for the community radios affected by the earthquake through aid that would include “donation of equipment and financial support”.

Even from Gaza, a group of Palestinians offered to send help to the devastated country.

In statements published in Democracy Now!, Jamal Al-Khudari, of the Popular Committee Against the Gaza Siege, said: “We are sending donations because we, the Palestinians, have suffered a lot and we feel closer to the suffering of the people of Haiti than to other peoples of the world. We suffer a lot and we feel their suffering, that is why we have decided to donate from the center of the suffering, from the besieged Gaza”.