Abstract
Emergency humanitarian action and development aid are the two ways in which the international community intervenes in Sub-Saharan Africa. The former acts in the short term to save as many human lives as possible, while the latter takes a long-term view, in particular to consolidate and build on the achievements of the former. When they intervene in countries where the state is unable to act, organizations specialized in humanitarian action can make full use of their professionalism to act without constraint. But questions arise when they operate in a country where the State has retained its legitimacy and the public administration has retained its potential, despite the withdrawal of its representatives from insecure areas. This is what happened in Mali between March 2012 and January 2013, when NGOs and the United Nations took charge of health action in northern Mali, without giving much thought to the role that the Ministry of Health's services should and could have played in the face of the tragedy experienced by the suffering populations, for whom the State was still responsible. Far from resolving this issue, my contribution will endeavor to present it in order to open the debate.
