OTTAWA — The Harper government has ratified an international treaty to ban deadly cluster bombs, after more than half a decade of criticism.

Canada signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008, but dragged its heels on ratifying it in the face of widespread international complaints, including from the usually neutral International Committee of the Red Cross.

The opposition stemmed from a loophole that would allow the Canadian Forces to be involved in the use of cluster bombs in joint operations with the United States, which has opted out of the convention.

The Conservative government eventually agreed to excise a single word from the bill — “using” — that clearly prohibits Canadian military personnel from directly using the weapons, but doesn’t entirely rule out their indirect involvement in combined operations.

Paul Hannon, the executive director of Mines Action Canada, says widespread concern remains over the existing loopholes even though the Canadian Forces have ruled out ever using what is widely seen as an inhumane weapon.

A single cluster bomb contains hundreds of baseball-size submunitions that often fail to explode and can sit dormant for decades, posing an ongoing hazard to civilians, especially young children in dozens of postwar countries.