S igned in 1975 by most European countries, the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union, the Helsinki Final Act took a major step in defusing tensions between the East and West by acknowledging the inviolability of borders between states. The accords also recognized the inviolability of individual human rights of those living within these borders, a recognition pushed by Western European and American diplomats as a condition for their acquiescing to norms of "territorial integrity of states," and "non-intervention in internal affairs."