Tjaco van den Hout studied law at Leiden University, graduating with distinction in 1974. He joined the Dutch Foreign Service the following year and initially served at posts in Africa and Southeast Asia, including as chargé d’affaires in Mozambique, then the youngest Dutch diplomat to hold such a position. He was subsequently assigned to the Netherlands Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, where he represented his country on the Second and Fifth Committees of the UN General Assembly and on the governing boards of UNICEF and UNDP. He also served in a personal capacity on the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), which advises the General Assembly on financial, administrative and managerial matters across the UN system.
After returning to the Dutch Foreign Ministry, he served first as Deputy Director of the International Organisations Department and then as Deputy Head of the Foreign Service. Five years later, he was appointed Consul-General in New York, where he headed his country’s largest consular post, with jurisdiction over the northeastern United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Three years later, he returned to the Foreign Ministry as Deputy Secretary-General.
Mr van den Hout subsequently left the Dutch diplomatic service to take the helm of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), a treaty-based international organisation devoted to the peaceful settlement of international disputes. The PCA is headquartered alongside the International Court of Justice in the Peace Palace in The Hague. After completing an initial five-year term, Mr van den Hout was re-elected for a second. In June 2008, having served the organisation for nine years and overseen its revitalisation, he announced that he would step down and return to diplomatic service.
He was then appointed Netherlands Ambassador to Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia and Laos, resident in Bangkok, and took up his duties in September 2008. At the conclusion of his assignment, he was awarded the Knight Grand Cross (First Class) of the Order of the White Elephant by Thailand’s then Crown Prince, now King Maha Vajiralongkorn, in recognition of his services to the country.
Mr van den Hout retired from diplomatic service in mid-2011 and joined the faculty of the Riga Graduate School of Law several months later. He was appointed a Visiting Professorial Fellow several years ago. Having taught as many as six law and diplomacy courses in a single academic year, he has gradually reduced his teaching commitments to devote more time to writing and now teaches only Economic Diplomacy in the Bachelor’s Programme.