The Balkans ACT (Against Crime of Trafficking) Now! was signed by representatives of four organisations involved in the project from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia.
The document is aimed at encouraging national, regional and international cooperation and the development of mechanisms to fight human trafficking, it was said.
According to global statistics, there are about six million victims at any given moment, which is 85 per 100,000 inhabitants, so the statistics of identified victims should be 85 persons. In Croatia in 2011, 0.31 out of 100,000 victims were found, in Serbia 0.85 and in the Netherlands none, said Munir Podumnjak of Croatia's Social Development Partnership.
The figure is 80 to 256 times lower than expected, so those victims either do not exist or the system has failed to find and provide them with appropriate care, he added.
This is a question of corruption and abuse of public trust, Podumnjak said, adding that mass scale human trafficking could not be organised without the state's knowledge.
He said victims were not appropriately provided for and that the system did not work because of the state's economic interests too.
The grey economy of developed countries rests on illegal immigration, notably the food and clothing industries, otherwise everything would be 25 per cent more expensive, said Podumnjak.
It was said efforts would be made to include other civil society organisations from the region in the project and that they expected the support of dozens of European organisations.