Bas de Gaay Fortman

Bas de Gaay Fortman
Bas de Gaay Fortman in 1974
Chair in Political Economy of Human Rights
Personal details
Born	6 November 1937 (1937-11-06) (age 79) The Hague, the Netherlands

Bastiaan "Bas" de Gaay Fortman (born 6 November 1937) is a Dutch politician and scholar. He has been a member of both the Dutch House of Representatives and the Senate for the PPR and GroenLinks parties. He currently holds the world's only chair in Political Economy of Human Rights at the University of Utrecht.

After attending public elementary education, he attended the Christian Gymnasium in the Hague, specialising in sciences. After graduating in 1956 he studied law and economy at the Free University of Amsterdam, receiving his Master of Law, and Doctorandus in Economy in 1963 cum laude. In the last four years of his study he taught Civil Law, Commercial Law and Political Economy. Following graduation he became a fellow at the Social Faculty of the Free University, and wrote his dissertation in Economics. During this period he taught macro- and micro-economic theory. In 1966 he received his Ph.D. in Economy for his disseration "Theory of competition policy".

In 1967 De Gaay Fortman left Amsterdam to become a senior lector at the University of Zambia in Lusaka, where he was head of the Economic faculty. Here he taught Economics of Rural Development, and Theory of the Economic Order. In 1968 he was appointed Chairman of the Agricultural Prices and Marketing Committee, an advisory Body of the Zambian government. He wrote two books about his residence in Zambia: "After Mulunguhsi, the economics of Zambian Humanism" in 1967 and "The Third World in Movement, a message from Zambia" in 1972.