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This article relates feminist debates on trafficking in women and prostitution to human rights discourses and policies, to assess proposals to ease women’s situations. The question of how prostitution is politically framed can decide and formulate adopted policy strategies, with neighbouring countries taking radically different approaches to legislation. Issues of women’s agency, victimisation and resistance are central. Traffic in women by its nature entails situations of violence and social control and complexities between migration, human trafficking and smuggling are apparent. The brief mapping of trafficking in women in southeast Europe (SEE) focuses primarily on the impact of militarization on some societies of the former Yugoslavia. Traffic in women in militarised conditions synthesises the use of force and social control of women into prostitution in particular ways. Criminal and human rights legislation sits uneasily with military actions, and UN sanctions, in reinforcing or attempting to combat such human rights abuses. Issues of shaming women and moral judgements against women (socially and intellectually) loom large in much discussion of these issues. Practical changes to legislation with regard to human rights and migration are considered by some feminist analysts to generate workable conditions to combat key aspects of the traffic in women.