BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — Every morning, Ada Beatriz Rico gets up very early and eats her breakfast with the dead.

She prepares a “mate” (a popular Argentine beverage), and starts tracking the women who were killed the previous day in the country. She deep dives among reports from colleagues, news agencies and newspapers — be it legacy or tabloid — in search of the information she will add to her database: name, age, location, weapon, relationship to the aggressor, children, previous reports filed.

Occasionally, she reads something that hits harder than usual. She walks to the balcony, takes a good look at her plants and tries to clear her mind before returning to her research.

“The report summarizes: beaten, stabbed, shot, burned. Amid all that is everything that was done to her leading up to that point, and we have to read it. It’s cruel. Some colleagues joined us and couldn’t keep doing it,” Rico says.

The 68-year-old activist has followed this routine every day —¬ Sundays, holidays and vacation days included — since 2008. That’s when she and two colleagues decided that, since there were no official statistics on femicide rates at that time, they would take up the task.

Rico is president and co-founder of La Casa del Encuentro, a feminist civil association in Buenos Aires that works to prevent, report and eradicate gender-based violence.

La Casa del Encuentro was the only organization in Argentina tallying femicides until 2015, when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, created its own registry.

“My idea — it was so naive,” Rico says with a smile, “was that official statistics would exist, because it’s a very complicated job. It belongs to the state, not civil society.”

La Casa del Encuentro issued its first report on femicides on Nov. 25, 2008, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, recalls Rico. The work to produce it was laborious and exhausting: she reviewed, by herself, 40 media sources per day.

Despite the effort, the document came out incomplete. Shortly after its publication, the family of Adriana Marisel “Lili” Zambrano, a woman who had been killed by her ex-partner months before, in Palpalá, a town in the northern province of Jujuy, requested that her name be added to the report.

In the beginning of 2009, the association reissued the report with corrections, including every case from the previous year. It received major press coverage, and a decision had to be made: stop the research there, or continue with further reports.

Rico was sewing a flag to demand justice for Zambrano when she decided. “I looked at the photo of Lili, and I could feel her looking back at me. It was tremendous. That’s when I said, ‘I will do this for you,’” Rico says. “That same night, I decided we were going to have the observatory.”

They have been publishing annual femicide reports — and improving the system — ever since. They currently register all killings of women that appear in the press and follow up on each case to determine if it was a femicide.

The activist explains that, every year, the observatory reports between 50 and 60 more femicides than the official statistics from the Supreme Court. Rico says that the justice system “lacks gender perspective.”

Since 2008, the organization has also backed laws that increase sentences for femicides, promoted the prevention of gender-based violence and ensured that those who have experienced violence receive child support.

In 2010, the Centro de Asistencia, Orientación y Prevención Integral en Violencia Sexista y Trata de Personas de la Asociación Civil La Casa del Encuentro opened its doors. The center provides free counseling and other support to people who have experienced gender-based violence and human trafficking. “Relatives were coming, and women were coming, [asking] us to help them. And we didn’t have a team,” Rico says.

The center now operates thanks to nearly 30 volunteer psychologists, social workers and attorneys. They advise, support and accompany people through situations involving gender-based violence.

“It changed my view of the field. Now I work with a gender- and feminist-based perspective,” says Daniela Morínigo, a psychologist and volunteer, about her experience with the association. “This way of functioning as a group, this way of belonging … I haven’t found it in other feminist spaces.”

Florencia Copparoni, an attorney and volunteer at the organization, adds that the way the group functions is key to improving treatment and mutual support.

Both emphasize Rico’s commitment. “She’s at all the marches, at all the meetings. It’s her life,” Morínigo says.

“The emergency phone is her cellphone,” Copparoni adds.

Rico says she’s very proud of all the volunteers who have come through the association, and she hopes they can carry on with her work when she is gone.

“I plan to keep shaking things up,” she says, “but I would love for La Casa del Encuentro to continue, because it’s a project that goes beyond those who founded it.”