In post-war Kosovo, the narrative of rescuing women became a powerful moral language used to legitimize the presence of international ‘peacekeepers’ and the authority of the international protectorate. Following the 1999 war, Kosovo became the site of one of the most extensive international “peacekeeping” and state-building interventions in Europe. The deployment of NATO troops and the establishment of the United Nations administration (UNMIK) introduced new forms of governance structured around security, stabilization, and international oversight, accompanied by infrastructures that reorganized urban space into fortified and tightly controlled environments where checkpoints, surveillance technologies, and the visible presence of peacekeeping soldiers became embedded in everyday urban life. Over time, this rescue narrative moved beyond the context of peacekeeping intervention and into the field of urban governance, where international institutions and donor-driven safety frameworks came to shape contemporary approaches to urban security. While responding to persistent gender-based violence and the everyday threat of male violence that continues to shape women’s movement through the city, neoliberal safety agendas increasingly promote women’s safety through technical and managerial solutions. In a context where women are already marginalized in public space, such interventions reinforce patriarchal relations of power while further entrenching the idea that women belong in the private sphere. Tracing how these discursive regimes travel across time and political contexts in Kosovo, I will look at how similar formations unfold in the present moment—particularly as regimes of women’s protection are mobilized to legitimize genocide and military interventions, and increasingly invoked in anti-immigrant political discourses that frame migrant exclusion as a matter of women’s safety.