While quantitative analysis shows the relationship between one-sided violence and peace broadly speaking, the case studies provide fine-grained analysis as to the potential causal mechanisms at play. South Sudan is unique among UN peacekeeping settings in its near-exclusive focus on protecting civilians, beginning with the outbreak of conflict in 2013 until the mission’s so-called POC sites were handed back to the government in 2020. While South Sudan illustrates the ways that high levels of violence against civilians can undermine the prospects for peace, it casts doubt on the UN’s ability to mitigate those effects, as even its most robust POC efforts still left most civilians unprotected. Further, this case demonstrates some areas of friction between POC and the primacy of politics, as mission efforts to protect civilians from state-inflicted violence soured the relationship between the mission and the government.