Tjaco van den Hout is a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Riga Graduate School of Law (RGSL), where he teaches Economic Diplomacy in the bachelor’s programme.
From 1997 to 1999, Mr van den Hout served as Deputy Secretary-General of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was subsequently Secretary-General of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague from 1999 to 2008. Returning to the diplomatic service, he was appointed Netherlands Ambassador to Thailand, concurrently accredited to Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. He retired in 2011 and moved to Riga, where his wife, Baiba Braže, had taken up a senior position at the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The family later spent four years in London, during Ms Braže’s tenure as Latvia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, followed by several years in Brussels, where she served as an Assistant Secretary-General of NATO. They returned to Riga in 2023. Ms Braže is now Latvia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.