Contemporary trends of warfare have witnessed a so-called ‘civilian footprint’ in support of military operations while battlefields have increasingly shifted towards urban areas. International humanitarian law established a framework through which civilians are protected from direct attack ‘unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities’. Three key areas have traditionally been associated with the analysis of direct participation in hostilities (‘dph’): civilian legal status, what behaviour amounts to dph, and what modalities govern this loss of protection. This article will focus on the latter and attempt to create a feasible and practical framework capable of harnessing the temporal scope of dph and limit the so-called ‘revolving door phenomenon’. The framework developed in this article will account for criteria that could and should aid decision-making on the battlefield, most notably causal associations between individuals and dph acts and the physical or non-physical nature of dph acts’ deployments.

当代战争趋势见证了支持军事行动的所谓“平民足迹”，而战场却越来越多地转移到城市地区。国际人道主义法建立了一个框架，通过该框架，“除非平民直接参与敌对行动”，才能保护平民免遭直接攻击。传统上，与直接参与敌对行动（' dph '）的分析相关的三个关键领域是：平民的法律地位，什么行为构成了dph以及导致这种保护丧失的方式。本文将重点讨论后者，并尝试创建一个能够利用dph的时间范围的可行且实用的框架。并限制所谓的“旋转门现象”。在这篇文章中制定的框架将占可能和应援决策在战场上的标准，个人之间最显着的因果关系DPH行为和物理或非物理性质DPH行为的部署。